A Northolt woman who invented a business to get a £50,000 Covid Bounce Back Loan backed by the government has been sentenced for fraud, BBC.com reported. Jagoda Rubaszko made up administrative service company which she falsely claimed had a turnover of £210,000. She then paid the loan into five separate bank accounts in Poland over a two-month period. Rubaszko was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, suspended for 21 months, for fraud by misrepresentation at Isleworth Crown Court on 5 June. Read more.

The U.K.'s Insolvency Service, responsible for returning assets to creditors in bankruptcy cases, said it appointed its first crypto intelligence specialist to help trace cryptocurrencies as digital assets become more widespread, CoinDesk.com reported. Former police investigator Andrew Small will take on the role at the government agency, and will primarily focus on criminal cases, the service said. In the past five years the number of cases that have identified crypto as an asset that can be recovered by liquidators rose by 420% to 59.

Administrators are on standby to handle the collapse of the UK arm of Builder.ai, a Microsoft-backed start-up which has filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Sky News has learnt that Alvarez & Marsal has been lined up to oversee the insolvency of Builder.ai's UK entities. News of the impending appointment comes days after Builder.ai, which was founded by Sachin Dev Duggal, collapsed in the U.S. Mr Duggal stepped down earlier this year.

Britain's financial regulator is to remove a ban on consumers buying crypto exchange-traded notes (ETNs), ditching its previous position of wanting to keep them out of the hands of retail investors, Reuters reported. The Financial Conduct Authority said on Friday that allowing retail investors to buy ETNs would support growth and competitiveness, in the latest sign that the UK is shifting its approach to crypto as the government seeks to grow the economy and support a digital assets industry.

Builder.ai filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. after creditors seized most of the cash in the British startup’s bank accounts, Bloomberg News reported. The company published a list of creditors in a chapter 7 case in a Delaware bankruptcy court, Builder.ai said in a filing dated June 2. Read more. (Subscription required.)

A liquidator has been appointed for the bankrupt charity that ran two public leisure centres in Lincoln, BBC.com reported. Yarborough and Birchwood leisure centres closed on 3 April after Active Nation ceased trading. Stockport-based firm Beesley Corporate Recovery has been appointed to handle the charity's insolvency process. Both facilities are expected to fully reopen by mid-July after City of Lincoln Council, which owns the buildings, chose charitable social enterprise Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL) as the interim operator for them.

Builder's merchant Blanchford Building Supplies racked up debts of more than £3.3million to suppliers before it fell into administration, YahooNews.com reported. The 75-year-old Headington-based business closed down ‘without warning’ earlier this year without giving any reason. All four of Blanchford's shops in Bicester, Wallingford, Princes Risborough and Haddenham closed on February 14. Timothy Townley and Danny Dartnaill, of business restructuring specialist BDO LLP, were appointed as joint administrators in mid-February.

Few British businesses now expect to be directly affected by recent changes in U.S. trade policy, with only 12% naming it as one of their top three sources of uncertainty, down from 22% a month earlier, a Bank of England survey showed on Thursday, Reuters reported. U.S. President Donald Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs on imports to the United States in early April. Britain secured a partial exemption from the tariffs in early May, although the details are still to be finalised. The BoE said 70% of businesses surveyed in May as part of its monthly Decision Maker Panel expected that U.S.

Thames Water suffered a major setback in its fight to avoid nationalisation on Tuesday as it said U.S. private equity firm KKR had pulled out of a multi-billion pound rescue plan, Reuters reported. Britain's biggest water supplier has been pushed to the edge by its 18 billion pound ($24.35 billion) debt pile, and was banking on KKR investing about 4 billion pounds in new equity to effectively buy the company. The government has said that it is on standby in case Thames Water fails to recapitalise and needs to be temporarily nationalised in order to keep services running.

Three community centres are to be handed back to a city council after the charity running them announced it was folding, BBC.com reported. The Newcastle Community Asset Trust (NCAT) managed community hubs in Fawdon, Cowgate, and Blakelaw, with the latter also housing a post office which had to temporarily close. The charity blamed rising costs, reduced funding and the long-term impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic for its "painful" decision. Newcastle City Council confirmed all three centres would remain open and "accessible to tenants and residents as normal".