Directors of Keydata Investment Services, where administrators believe £103m ($169m) of private investors’ money may have gone missing, paid themselves £7.9m in the two years prior to the company coming under investigation by the Financial Services Authority.

Filings at Companies House show that three directors – Stewart Owen Ford, chief executive, Craig McNeil, company secretary, and Mark John Owen – received £3.7m in the year to September 2008 – even though the company reported just £2,004 profit on £15.7m of turnover.