Director ‘syphoned off’ €960k

A man who syphoned off nearly €1m from his business PayPal account to his own bank account has been disqualified by the High Court from acting as a company director for five years.

Alan Barrett, aged 38, a director of wound-up online event registration website Eventelephant, had deprived charities and event organisers of hard-earned income “which the court cannot acknowledge sufficiently through its words”, said Mr Justice Tony O’Connor.

Mr Barrett, of White Ash, Ashbourne, Co Meath, was joint owner of the company, which operated a self-service online event registration website allowing customers to use the site to create their own web pages to advertise and sell tickets.