A NOW three-year-old prosecution of a man accused of embezzling nearly £80,000 from a Greenock company has been hit by 'a number of unfortunate incidents' which have further delayed the protracted proceedings.

Simon Fellows, 55 - charged with stealing the money from his former employer PG Paper - is now not due to stand trial before a sheriff and jury until the end of year, having been arrested on the matter in June 2021.

The latest calling of the case was told that there are 'hundreds of pages of documentation' that his lawyer requires to examine.

Fellows, who lives 270 miles from Inverclyde in Flintshire, Wales, denies stealing £79,194 of company funds when he was employed as a sales manager with the award-winning firm.

It is claimed that Fellows, who turned up for a previous court hearing without a solicitor, took the money during the course of a single working day in March 2017.

He represented himself at a calling of the indictment case in March, having earlier been denied sanction to be defended at trial by legal counsel.

A follow-up hearing this week was told by recently-appointed defence solicitor Ruth Wallace that the case is 'proving to be a complex matter'.

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The lawyer said that 'a number of unfortunate incidents' had prevented Fellows from meeting with his defence team, meaning they have been unable to go through all of the evidence.

However, Sheriff James Varney said: "The baseline indictment is one of embezzlement.

"It is not the most complicated indictment I have ever seen.

"It is a paperwork exercise."

Solicitor Ms Wallace said the background to Fellows' involvement with the company made the case more challenging.

An earlier trial date was previously called off after Fellows failed to appear at the sheriff court.

He is due to return to the dock in August, ahead of a four-day trial set for November.