Bowes 'made footy legend bankrupt'

Geordie football legend Malcolm Macdonald devotes eight pages of his autobiography, Super Mac, to how he was forced into bankruptcy through dealings with Alan Bowes in the early 1990s.

Bowes contacted Macdon-ald and the footballer became lessee of the Tweed View Hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Macdonald says of Bowes: "I was impressed by what he'd shown me and by most of what he'd said. Even so, there was a question mark in my mind - perhaps because the company was called ATG, [standing for] All Time Great group of companies - a grandiose name that ought to have been a warning in itself."

Problems arose when a £110,000 bridging loan taken out by Macdonald was diverted elsewhere - with a falsified signature. Eventually, Macdonald found that 26 companies in the ATG group had been transferred into his name. Macdonald said he proved the signatures on the companies' documents were not his by signing his name 10 times. But he was forced into bankruptcy as a result of his involvement with Bowes.

Macdonald recalls meeting a member of staff working for the Official Receiver. In the book, he writes: "She said there were steps she could take against Alan Bowes about which she couldn't speak to me, which was intriguing.

"When I'd signed the bankruptcy forms she'd put in front of me, she said: 'What I can tell you is I will go after this fellow and I will have him.' Sure enough, it wasn't long before, by accident, I saw in the Daily Mail a list of people barred as company directors and there was Alan Bowes' name." Bowes was banned from serving as a company director for nine years.