Wyatt and Co had hoped to overturn an order to pay £1.4 million to Goldtrail’s liquidator PricewaterhouseCoopers.

They were appealing against a ruling made in 2014, which ordered them to pay compensation after being found to have dishonestly assisted Goldtrail’s director Abdulkadir Aydin in his breach of “fiduciary duty” by misapplying the company’s money. The appeal was heard over two days at the Royal Courts of Justice last month.

However in the judgement released today, the judge said: "I would dismiss this appeal."

He added though that there was a section of the original ruling that he would overturn. "...I would reverse the judge’s conclusion that the appellants were liable to compensate Goldtrail for the extra Viking £500,000 as part of the misapplication claim."

But he said that the adjustment would have "no overall economic effect on the appellants" because the judgement ruled that "the appellants need to succeed in both parts of their appeal to avoid liability altogether".
 
During the appeal David Eaton Turner, acting for Wyatt, Sigurdarson, Stephensen and Black Pearl said: “They were defrauded by somebody who departed for Ukraine without a word and a huge amount of their money. To add insult to injury, they then received a demand for a huge amount of money for being defrauded. They ended up paying twice."

One of the three judges hearing the appeal Lord Justice Vos, said in March that there was “no doubt they were defrauded by Aydin” who he described as the “big fraudster”.

However he added: “They were very unlucky it went belly up. But if you go into this type of dirty deal and it all goes wrong, it tends to go very wrong.

The decision was handed down today by three judges in the Court of Appeal following last month’s hearing.

Lord Justice Vos dismissed the appeal by former XL Leisure boss Phil Wyatt, and associates Magnus Stephensen, Halldor Sigurdarson and an entity called Black Pearl Investments Ltd (Black Pearl).

He described the factual circumstances surrounding the case as “convoluted”, which made it appear “more complicated than it really is”.

It concerned the attempt by the then owner of Goldtrail Travel Abdulkadir Aydin (who is now thought to be dead) to sell a 50% stake in the company to both Black Pearl and Turkish airline Onur Air, “without the one knowing about the other”.
 
The appeal by Onur Air had already been dismissed earlier this year.