Peter Connelly, the franchise’s original composer and sound designer, requested the loan from the United Kingdom’s government in an unauthorized manner, leading him to end up in jail.
Connelly is serving 16 months in prison, starting yesterday, July 17, for “fraudulently obtaining” a £37,500 ($50,000) loan from the UK government during the pandemic. The sentence, published on the government’s website through the Insolvency Service, revealed that Connelly had received two loans for his business when businesses could only have received one. The first was a legitimate loan at the start of the pandemic in May 2020 for £22,000 ($29,500). The second loan came a month later and was for £37,500. David Snasdell, the Insolvency Service’s lead investigator, said Connelly deliberately inflated his company’s turnover to get a bigger loan.
Connelly claimed that the turnover his company suffered was £150,000, when in reality it was just over £58,000. When he was questioned about the loan, he told the Insolvency Service that he had been given the opportunity to reimagine the Tomb Raider soundtrack and said that the project would be very profitable and significant. He claimed that he had taken measures such as selling his car to pay for the work, although he later claimed that the project had stalled. In August 2021, his company went into liquidation and neither of the loans was repaid.
Connelly will repay the loans in several instalments, which will continue while he serves his prison sentence, and he has also been banned from being a director of a company for the next six years. “Peter Connelly blatantly disregarded the rules of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme, designed to support small and medium-sized businesses during the pandemic. Connelly not only secured two loans when businesses were only allowed one, but deliberately inflated his company’s turnover to receive more money than he was entitled to,” Snasdell said.
It’s an embarrassing case…
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