A trainee accountant told a London court yesterday how he had to reform the accounting systems of an alleged fraudster’s multimillion-dollar property company.

Roopesh Kumar Boyjoonayth said he started working for Achilleas Kallakis’s Atlas Management Corporation in 2004, after his father met the businessman in Mauritius and told him his son was studying accounting in the UK.

But when he arrived he found there was no organisation and he had to put basic systems in place, he said.

Mr Kallakis with co-defendant Alexander Williams is accused of defrauding AIB out of £740 million in property loans on the back of fake guarantees. Both deny the charges.

“When I started, it was not organised at all,” Mr Boyjoonayth told the court. He said bookkeeper Christine Owen soon joined him in the accounting department and continued to make changes.

Mr Boyjoonayth said they began to notice that suppliers of things such cleaning and maintenance services were inflating their prices, which led to Mr Williams and Mr Kallakis checking the invoices themselves.

Mr Boyjoonayth was also asked about his dealings with Frank Merchie, who he described as Mr Kallakis’s “right-hand man in Monaco”. He said despite setting up an ordered accounting system in Monaco, Mr Merchie remained unsystematic in his approach.

“Frank Merchie would just phone up and say I need money to pay this bill, for that bill and the other,” he said.

Mr Boyjoonayth said he understood Mr Merchie was a co-signatory on the company’s bank accounts with Mr Williams, but said there was an occasion when Mr Merchie had authorised payments on his own. He said: “Alex was not too pleased with it so he asked Frank what happened. He then started investigating.”

The trial continues.