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INEOS have closed down a business which could have delivered half a billion pounds of profit in the coming years, a top accountant said last night.

Rather than losing money, as the company claim, the chemical plant at Grangemouth delivered £7million in profits last year, analyst Richard Murphy told the Daily Record.

His claims fuelled speculation that Ineos used smart accounting techniques to paint a bleaker

future for the plant and secure taxpayers’ cash.

Murphy said the plant made £6million profit the year before, even after a pension fund shortfall was factored in.

Ineos claim it loses £10million a month.

Murphy, of Fulcrum Chartered Accountants, studied the Ineos accounts on behalf of the union Unite. He says the plant was making a fortune until Ineos apparently set out to make it appear loss-making.

He said Ineos, unlike any other company, decided to factor in their investment in the plant as a loss.

Yesterday, Treasury officials involved in negotiating a £125million infrastructure loan to Ineos said they had to ask for more information from the company over the complex financial structure.

The Scottish government have also chipped in with £9million of grants, making a total of £134million.

Ineos appeared to have presented their accounts in a way which emphasised their need for an urgent injection of finance to underwrite future infrastructure costs.

An source close to yesterday’s talks between the UK Government and bosses said: “There was a fear this could be a tactic to secure more Government investment.

“However, we are satisfied that, while their accounts may be complicated, there is a genuine danger of the plant going out of business.”

Calum MacLean, the Ineos chairman who closed the plant, has said: “People need to realise this site has

lost £150million per year for the last four years. It has a pension fund which is £200million in deficit and it is on the point of going bust.”

Murphy said: “It is like buying a car. You can spread the cost over 10 years, you don’t spread the cost over a day.

“That is not the way I would recognise accounts to be done normally.

“The accounts are figures which are hard to understand.

“If we actually look at the accounts of the chemicals operation for 2012, the actual basic profitability, it made £7million. The year before, it made £6million. That is basic trading.

“What they did was quite unusual.

“They said they were facing major financial difficulties. They then said they were going to write off£390million of plant and equipment at the site. That is extraordinary.

“But Ineos chemicals was not loss-making.

“They then said, if we write off this sum, we won’t be able to pay off the money we have borrowed from other Ineos companies. So they were released from repaying loans of £464million.

“The net effect was they made a gain, they actually made an exceptional profit. Ineos said, you don’t have to repay the loans, so the loans they wrote off were greater than the assets.

“The net effect was they made a profit on the write-offs of £69million.

“As a result of the write-offs, they also did something else. They reckoned they had a tax credit of £79million.

“We have two conflicting stories. One is that the company were doing badly. On the other side, they are saying we are going to recognise we have got deferred tax assets.

“That means they think they are going to get profits in the future.”

(Image: Getty Images)

Murphy added: “Using their numbers, they think they are going to save £117million in tax in future, at the rate of Corporation Tax they use in their accounts. That means they are expecting to make more than half a billion pounds in profits.

“The plant now has no more assets to write off, the loan has been written off. And actually, that massively improves the profitability of the site.

“I think there is an odd story in those accounts.

“The future of this company at the chemical plant could be quite profitable. It could make quite a

lot of money.

“How do you reconcile that, what’s going on here?

“They are using accounting rules I don’t recognise. They are using numbers I can’t find in any actual published accounts.”

Murphy said he would not have signed off the accounts.

He added: “There looks to me here to be a profitable plant. Why they want to close it, I don’t know. Are they preparing the business for sale? I just don’t know.”

Unite regional secretary Pat Rafferty said: “This has only increased our suspicions that Ineos are using fancy accounting manoeuvres to pull the wool over the country’s eyes.”