SLIPPERY Drybrook business tycoon Royston Knight is believed to have fled the country after failing to meet a court deadline for paying £31,747 legal costs.

Knight’s converted Chapel home in Morse Road Drybrook appears to have been uninhabited for several weeks and suspicion is growing the he may have cut and run to avoid further court action.

A source at the Criminal Enforcement department of the government Insolvency Service, which is chasing Knight for the £31,747 costs, said they have no idea where he has gone but thinks he may well have left the country.

He also confirmed that Knight has not paid one penny towards the £31,000 costs despite the deadline for payment being September 22.

In March, Knight walked free from Bristol Crown Court after being convicted of a string of serious business offences.

In court, he was depicted as sly, slippery, duplicitous, disingenuous and mendacious.

Judge Michael Longman sentenced Knight, 68, to 13 months in prison, suspended for two years.

The judge also imposed a curfew between 8pm and 6am to last for four months, ordered Knight to carry out 100 hours of unpaid community work and disqualified him from being a company director for 10 years.

He also ordered Knight to pay £31,747 of the prosecution’s costs of £250,000 and warned him that if he re-offended, he would be sent to prison.

Knight, who was described by Judge Michael Longman as fraudulent and dishonest, had admitted continuing to act as a company director after being declared bankrupt or while being disqualified.

He had left a labyrinthine trail of business interests, debt and broken relationships stretching from a converted chapel in Drybrook to the rainforests of Panama and the Pacific republic of the Philippines.