Six former insurance executives who have been accused of distorting their company accounts and “failing to act with honesty and integrity” have been banned from working in the British market. The ban was announced late last week by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which said it can’t prosecute the six men.

The banned men were directors of Chiyoda Europe, a London-based subsidiary of Japanese insurer Chiyoda Fire & Marine Insurance. The FSA accused them of distorting company accounts in 1999 and 2000. In 1999 they recorded a capital injection from the parent company and a loan from a reinsurer as reinsurance contracts. This enabled them to boost a $81.2 million loss to a $9 million loss.

In 2000 the directors then entered into a series of further reinsurance contracts to repay the original loan.

And there’s a catch. The deals were done before the FSA took up its role in 2001, so the only action the FSA can take is against the directors.

Yoshiaki Yamazaki, Hiroshi Okazaki and Robert McKibbin have been banned from “performing any functions in relation to any insurance activity” regulated by the FSA. It was even worse for Kazuhide Oda, Toru Morota and David Titterington, who have been banned “from performing any function involving the exercise of management authority over any other person in relation to any regulated activity carried out by any authorised person”.