Helphire’s chief financial officer has stepped down as an independent review of the accident management group revealed it had misled investors about its financial position.

KPMG was called in by Helphire in May after it became aware it had overvalued the amount of credit hire debtors in its financial systems.

Helphire had reported in its 2010 results that it carried £171m worth of credit hire debtors outstanding.

It revealed last week, following KPMG’s investigation, that that figure was overstated by £27m.

That news was shortly followed by the announcement that chief financial officer Ian Wardle has stepped down from the board, and is being replaced by Simon Poulton in an interim role.

Helphire said the cause of the overstatement was an error in calculating the settlement value of debtors, plus systematic inaccuracies in an estimating process put in place to value the debtors.

Richard Rose, chairman, said: “That this error arose is a matter of huge disappointment to the board who have been working for more than two years to deliver change and stabilise the business.”

Wardle was previously chief executive of Camden Group Services, the UK's 9th largest dealer group, when it went into administration in 2009.