A chartered accountant jailed for stealing more than £500,000 from his employer has been disqualified from acting as a company officer.

Phillip McCarthy, of Main Road, Colby, was jailed in August 2018 for three years and four months for offences carried out while working as finance manager and company secretary at yacht services company Dohle.

He was also a director and company secretary of Vantage Corporate Services Ltd.

Mr McCarthy was released from custody in November last year, having served his time on remand.

The Financial Services Authority applied to disqualify him from acting as a company officer, arguing that his conduct rendered him unfit.

Deemster Andrew Corlett agreed and disqualified him for a period of eight years.

In a judgment, he said: ’In my view this sends out a clear message that behaviour such as this will not be tolerated in this jurisdiction.’

McCarthy had pleaded guilty to four counts of theft and eights offences of obtaining money transfer by deception.

Over the course of five years, he had forged cheques, falsified invoices and made fraudulent bank transfers to his own credit card account.

Despite his guilty plea, he appealed against his conviction - and indeed made an attempt to withdraw his guilty plea.

His appeal was dismissed in May this year.

Mr McCarthy had initially indicated that he would be contesting disqualification but then conceded it would be inevitable and it would just be a question of how long he should be disqualified.

Deemster Corlett said an aggravating factor was that the offences were committed over a lengthy period between 2010 and 2016 and the sums involved were considerable.

He said the offences appear to have been planned and calculated and there was a considerable degree of elaboration and sophistication.

’This was a classic case of abuse of a position of trust,’ he said. ’On one view certainly they were offences committed by way of personal gain to feed a gambling addiction.’

Mr McCarthy’s case was that his conduct was not motivated by greed but that he suffered from gambling addiction. This had in turn caused stress, anxiety and depression. Mr McCarthy has now stopped gambling and his mental health issues were now under control.

Deemster Corlett said pathological gambling is recognised as a mental disorder in itself and it was permissible for the court to take this into account when determining the length of disqualification.

He said any dishonesty of a company officer is worthy of condemnation, particularly in an international financial centre such as the Isle of Man.