A crooked businessman who was jailed after making £45 million selling bogus bomb detectors has now been banned from becoming the director of a company.

Gary Edward Bolton, 49, is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence after he was found guilty of selling fake bomb detecting equipment to the police and even military serving in Afghanistan.

Bolton, a divorced father-of-three, claimed his GT200 and ‘Mole’ devices could find explosives, drugs, cash, tobacco and even people from up to three miles away.

But in fact the detector, sold by his company Global Technical - which was based at Sevington near Ashford - was actually made from a novelty golf ball finder and was nothing more than a retractable antenna mounted on a plastic box.

He was jailed after a trial at the Old Bailey two years ago, when it emerged each ‘detector cost just £1.82, despite him selling them for up to £20,000 each.

Now, two years after his conviction, Bolton, of Redshank Road, Chatham has been disqualified by the Insolvency Service from acting as a company director for 15 years.

His company traded from 2007 until 2012, when a police investigation forced the company to close and later go into liquidation.

Cheryl Lambert, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: “This is a case where Mr Bolton has used a limited company to not only trade fraudulently, but his actions have directly resulted in people being exposed to extremely high risk of injury and potential loss of life in foreign countries. That was an outcome he knew would be a likely consequence of his trading activities.

“Mr Bolton misused the privileges afford by limited liability for personal gain at the expense of human life. The maximum permitted disqualification was sought and obtained for the most heinous of cynical corporate activity.”

Bolton, who later admitted he had no background in science or engineering, baffled officials and potential customers with crackpot scientific theories to drum up support for his business, which was turning over more than £3 million a year.

He managed to hoodwink Giles Paxman, the diplomat brother of TV journalist Jeremy Paxman, into offering his support while he was the UK’s ambassador to Mexico.

More than 1,200 GT200 machines were sold in the country after Mr Paxman, allowed the British embassy to be used as a ‘showroom’ for the dodgy devices.

Members of a trade body linked to the British Army also helped sell Bolton’s machines to the military in Saudi Arabia.

Thousands of the detectors were sold to other countries including India, Pakistan, Egypt, China, and Thailand. Some were bought by the Dutch navy and were tested at Heathrow airport.

Bolton even pitched to the organisers of the Sydney Olympics, as well as police forces and customs in the UK, but was unable to secure orders.

Scientific tests later proved the machines offered no advantage over random chance – but Bolton continues to insist they work perfectly.

He even called a self-proclaimed expert to give a possible explanation for the science behind them during the three-week trial in which he was convicted of fraud.Judge Richard Hone QC jailed Bolton for seven years for the scam, which he said had damaged the reputation of British industry around the world.