They claim that Graham Gutteridge spent about £300,000 ($426,000/B485,000) of Non-League’s money on a house in west London for his wife and on fees to send his teenage daughter to finishing school.
The Guardian newspaper confirms that Peters & Peters, the City law firm that specialises in fraud cases won an injunction to freeze the assets on behalf of the independent directors of NLM, venture capital backers Bracken Partners and directors of Eye Group, a sports marketing firm where Mr Gutteridge has a large shareholding.
Mr Gutteridge was ousted as chairman of NML, which publishes a newspaper aimed at non-league football fans, and shares in the Alternative Investment Market (AIM)-listed company were suspended. NLM last month admitted to the stock exchange that it had found discrepancies in its accounts.
On Friday, the company announced that Mr Gutteridge had sold 1 million shares in the company back in August but the sale had only just been declared. The transaction is apparently a breach of company rules and City regulators are likely to become involved.
The alleged misappropriation of funds was discovered after Bracken called in PricewaterhouseCoopers to investigate NLM and Eye Group's accounts. Lawyers decided to freeze Mr Gutteridge's assets after receiving PWC's report.
"We will be taking every proper and possible step towards the earliest possible recovery of funds which we contend have been misappropriated," said Keith Oliver, senior partner at Peters & Peters.
The former chairman of UK-listed sports publishing firm Non-League Media has had £1.25million ($1.8m/B
