BOSSES of a Colne firm have been given a six-year ban after their outfit was found to have raised false invoices and left their financiers nearly £550,000 out of pocket.

Administrators were called into Bellwoven, a textile label manufacturer based in New Market Street, Colne, in September 2011.

The Lancashire Telegraph reported in May that year how a copper piping thief had left them with a £100,000 bill.

And it has now emerged that from December 2010 and August 2011, according to the Insolvency Service (IS), the company had breached a factoring agreement with an unnamed finance firm.

Under the deal, 85 per cent of the value of invoices raised by the Colne company would be advanced to the company by the factoring business.

But the company later confirmed to insolvency investigators that they believed invoices totalling at least £218,663 were false.

And by the point of administration, the factoring company was owed £544,258, the difference between the advances and the repayments made by Bellwoven.

Bellwoven director Hans John Oliver Brabender, 42, of Skipton Road, Foulridge has now been disqualified as a company director, following the IS probe.

And fellow directors Helga Brabender and Hans Brabender, 72 and 73, both of Dunmore House, Strone, near Dunoon, were given similar disqualifications.

Finance director Steven Doney, 46, of Widdop Road, Hebden Bridge, was also banned from being a director for six years.

Insolvency officials say repayments had been made to factoring firm by a new company, in which the Brabenders and Doney were said to be involved, since the administration took place.

Hans Brabender and Mr Doney resigned as directors of Bellwoven Packaging last November, according to Companies House.