A preliminary report into the collapse of TransTec, the engineering firm founded by the former paymaster general Geoffrey Robinson, has uncovered fresh accounting irregularities including an unexplained payment of £400,000 to the motor manufacturer Rover.
The report, by the Department of Trade and Industry, finds that Mr Robinson and other non-executive directors were unaware of an $18m (£12m) claim from Ford which effectively bankrupted the business - the demand was kept secret in a cover-up that was named "project Durham".
However, it describes TransTec's general accounting practices as "aggressive" and reveals that there were significant shortfalls in the pension fund of a subsidiary.
The most significant new finding concerns £400,000 paid to Rover in July 1997, two months after Mr Robinson quit as chairman to join the newly elected Labout government.
The inspectors report that "the precise nature of this payment is not yet clear to us". They say TransTec's manage ment regarded it as a payment to secure a new contract, known as "NG4 sump", although when the transaction occurred, "no definite contract for the sump was, so far as we are aware, in existence".
The Rover transaction appeared in TransTec's accounts as an advance payment for tooling.
Trade secretary Stephen Byers commissioned the DTI inquiry to establish the facts surrounding TransTec's sudden plunge into receivership in December 1999.
The two inspectors investigating the affair stress they are not, at this stage, criticising any "company, firm or individual".
At the time of its collapse, TransTec's non-executive directors announced that they had just discovered a £12m compensation demand from Ford, which was angry at poor supply of cylinder heads for its Explorer cars.
The report reveals that the first demand for money from Ford was on April 23, 1997 - a couple of weeks before Mr Robinson stood down.
It reports: "Shortly after the claim was brought to the attention of TransTec it was determined to keep the matter as confidential as possible. The claim and its treatment were given a code name, project Durham. No non-executive directors were involved."
Mr Robinson, now backbench MP for Coventry North West, welcomed this finding. His magazine, New Statesman, issued a statement saying the report "confirms the account he has stood by throughout that neither he nor any other non-executive director had any knowledge of the Ford claim".
The statement went on to point out that TransTec's collapse occurred "more than two and a half years after he left the company".
In a wider comment, the DTI inspectors said TransTec's "aggressive" accounting practices tended to anticipate future profits and defer expenditure.
The report remarks: "Another way of putting this is that a more conservative view could have been taken of profits".
Mr Robinson was told in October that he would not face charges following a police investigation into government grants to the company between 1986 and 1989. The Serious Fraud Squad dropped an investigation into his role in TransTec's failure last March.
