A BANKER spared jail over a £3m property fraud was the man who approved the controversial mortgage deal on the KC Stadium lease, the Mail can reveal today.
Andrew Ratnage arranged two loans worth a total of £3.5m from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to Hull City's then owner Russell Bartlett in 2007.
At the time, shares in the Stadium Management Company (SMC) were transferred to a new holding company set up by Mr Bartlett to obtain the loans, which helped fund his takeover of the club.
In the latest SMC accounts, current Hull City owner Assem Allam criticised the city council for not doing more to block the deal as it involved transferring shares to a holding company with no trading history and no assets of any value.
"The loans were advanced to the company and taken out almost immediately and the security given with no obvious benefit to the SMC," he said.
The Mail understands Mr Allam and his son Ehab, who are now the SMC sole directors, initially disputed their liability for the outstanding loan repayments after discovering Ratnage had been charged in a separate fraud case.
However, they recently agreed to settle with RBS and repay the inherited loans.
Last month, Ratnage, 50, of Brentwood, Essex, was given a 20-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, after pleading guilty to three counts of obtaining a service by deception, one count of fraud and seven counts of false accounting.
He was also ordered to carry out 300 hours of work in the community.
The Old Bailey heard how Ratnage and his boss Raymond Pask, 54, were both earning more than £100,000 a year, but wanted to make more money using a mortgage scam.
Together they set up a series of fake companies in the name of Pask's family and then made applications for loans to refurbish homes and sell them at a profit.
The bankers, who were based at NatWest's office in Romford, Essex, a bank owned by RBS, then fraudulently borrowed just under £3m over five years.
They planned to take advantage of the booming property market to pay back the loans and cash in on the profits.
The mortgage applications were submitted to the RBS without the pair ever revealing who was behind them. They also forged documents to inflate the value of homes.
Once the RBS, which is majority-owned by the taxpayer, lent them the cash, they were able to buy two properties in London, one in Kent and another in Essex.
Bosses at RBS discovered the fraud in October 2010, after Ratnage, then a relationship manager, took long-term sick leave.
An investigation found the companies used to make the loan applications were linked to Pask, the bank's regional director for relationship management in Essex.
Pask resigned from RBS after 33 years service in December 2010, but it was not until last year the two men were charged by City of London Police.
In his police interview, Ratnage complained to officers that he was poorly trained and "under a huge amount of pressure at work".
