FOUR men involved in a business deal which promised to bring superfast broadband to Bournemouth have been jailed for fraud and bribery charges.

The £160 million fraud case surrounded the financing of H2O Networks, which went into administration six years ago.

In 2008, H20 — then trading as FibreCity — launched as the internet of the future and Bournemouth was heralded as the UK's first “fibre optic city”.

But work on laying superfast broadband cables across the borough ground to a halt in October 2010 when Fibre City ran into financial problems, leaving residents, subcontractors and council bosses angry and frustrated and numerous roads in a mess.

More than 100 roads in Boscombe, Winton and Moordown were left partly dug up as a result.

H2O was put into administration by its owners in April 2011 after being caught up in a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation of former funding partners Total Asset Finance (TAF).

The probe found H2O Networks signed long-term broadband deals. The contracts were sold on to TAF, which used them to obtain cash from Barclays and Belgian bank KBC.

However, the value of the contracts was inflated and some were entirely made up, a jury at Southwark Crown Court heard.

Between 2007 and 2010, the fraud amounted to almost £160m.

Executives linked to the project – Stephen Dartnell, 60, George Alexander, 50, Simon Mundy, 50, and Carl Cumiskey, 56 – were convicted of the three-year scam after a five-month trial at the court last week.

"Principal offender" Dartnell, who worked for TAF, was sent down for 15 years after being convicted of two counts of fraud by false representation and one charge of giving corrupt payments.

Dartnell's "right-hand man" Alexander, also working for TAF, and H2O finance director Cumiskey, were both convicted of two counts of fraud and were jailed for 12 years and 10 years respectively.

Mundy was paid nearly £900,000 in bribes to act as an "inside man" at KBC to approve loans for TAF. He was handed a seven-year jail term after being convicted of one count of fraud and one of corrupt payments.

Both Dartnell and Cumiskey were barred from being directors of a company for periods of 12 years and 10 respectively.

In Bournemouth the fibre city project was taken over by CityFibre Holdings in 2011.

In 2012 the internet service provider Gigler began offering its superfast broadband to the 21,000 Bournemouth homes that are connected to the CityFibre network.

Martin Dover, traffic manager at Bournemouth Council, said: “There are a number of customers still using the services that City Fibre Holdings are providing in the Bournemouth area.

“The company left a proportion of our highways in a poor state and we are in contact with them to have this resolved but the council has made no financial loss.”