McAlpine's third slate division director could not have spotted financial irregularities

Dominic Lavelle, group finance director with Alfred McAlpine, might be one of the three directors of the group’s slate division, but that would not have given him any opportunity to spot falsified documents, said a spokesman for the group.

Latest published accounts for the slate division show the three directors as Chris Law, Geraint Roberts and Lavelle. Both Law, managing director, and Roberts, operations director, were suspended last month when an alleged accounting fraud came to the surface. It had been running for four years.

“You have to have a main board director on all the group’s subsidiaries,” explained the group spokesman, “because of the legal requirement to link them to the group’s centre.”

Lavelle was not in an operational position on the slate division’s board. The spokesman said: “In his operational post as group finance director he would receive the accounts from the slate division, so if a deception is being perpetrated, it doesn’t matter which divisional board he sits on, he doesn’t see the figures until they surface in his office.

“It’s a red herring for anyone in the City to think anything else.”

McAlpine’s slate division had been expected to report a £4.5m profit once its 2006 figures are unveiled, but with damage resulting from the paper fudging set to cost McAlpine £13m, the consequence of the turmoil will be a loss in the slate business’s imminent figures of around £8m.