LONDON (Bloomberg) Geoffrey Stuart Pearson, the former chief executive officer of a Bermuda-based investment company at the centre of a fraud scandal, was sentenced to a year in prison for making misleading statements about its assets.Pearson, 63, was found guilty of three counts of making misleading statements to the financial markets after a five-week trial at a London criminal court, according to a statement today from the UK Serious Fraud Office, which prosecuted the case. Pearson, who was acquitted of 10 other charges, was also barred from working as a company director for five years, the SFO said.The jury found that Pearson lied to the market, saying that Langbar International Ltd had assets held by Banco do Brasil SA and others in order to boost its share price. He also falsely stated that the company had an asset value of £357 million ($578 million), according to the agency’s statement. “This was fraud on a grand scale with scant regard for the essential integrity of the financial markets or for the inevitable losses and misery caused to the investors,” SFO director Richard Alderman said in the statement.Pearson’s lawyer, Shula de Jersey, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.Langbar was set up in Bermuda in June 2003 and began trading on London’s Alternative Investment Market later that year. Shortly after starting business, Langbar said it had won South American contracts which it sold for a profit of around $350 million. Those contracts didn’t exist, nor did the money, prosecutors said during a trial that began last month.Pearson was appointed CEO of the firm, formerly known as Crown Corp Ltd, in June 2005. By October of that year, trading in the company’s shares was suspended. Pearson had pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of making misleading statements.