Oil firm suspends shares amid accounting concerns

Shares have been suspended in a major oil industry company amid concerns regarding the integrity of accounting records.

Aim-listed Baltic Oil Terminals, worth around £23 million, made the discovery earlier in the year that its accounting records may not be completely reliable.

It has announced that a disaffected employee may have 'falsified, removed or destroyed' the oil industry company's records, which meant the firm would be unable to publish their results within six months of the end of the financial year – June 30th.

"It became clear that some of the local financial records had either been destroyed or removed and an attempt made at replacing these with falsified information," Baltic Oil Terminals said in a statement.

It added that while directors "do not believe that these actions have led to any previous financial information reported to the market proving erroneous", the missing documents will have to be reconstructed from scratch.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that UK ministers ignored warnings that oil and gas shortages could lead to civil unrest.