He was being sought by financial investigators after leaving a trail of unanswered questions and unpaid bills in his wake.

Neither administrators nor business partners said they could trace Jason White after he apparently vanished, leaving his clamping firm more than £110,000 in debt.

But the Daily Echo has managed to track down the former clamping boss – to a caravan in a pub car park.

Where investigators had failed to find the man who for many years has run Southampton’s clamping industry, the Daily Echo was able to speak to him when he appeared behind the bar of the White Hart pub.

And Mr White told our reporter he had given up car-clamping for good and wanted to put those days behind him.

He also claimed to have nothing more to do with a new clamping firm, Ultimate Car Park Solutions, even though he was wearing one of their T-shirts during the conversation.

And Mr White insisted he had not hidden away from investigators and had been in touch with both the new firm and the administrator looking into the financial collapse of his former company, Whites Car Park Solutions.

The Daily Echo tracked down Mr White after receiving calls claiming he had been spotted as far afield as France.

Other information suggested he had been travelling through Kent and Surrey.

The tip-offs followed reports by the paper into the financial collapse of Whites Car Park Solutions with debts of £110,000.

The paper told how the official administrator brought in to look into the company could not find Mr White to speak to him.

Eventually the Daily Echo tracked him to a pub in East Sussex, where he has apparently been staying in a caravan in the car park.

When approached by the Daily Echo, Mr White denied accusations he had failed to keep in touch with the authorities after Whites Car Park Solutions was plunged into administration.

Instead Mr White said the administrator knew exactly where he was, as did his business partners at Ultimate Car Parking Solutions which has taken over many of his former clamping sites.

When the Daily Echo first spoke to Ultimate Car Parking Solutions, the company had denied Mr White was in any way involved with them.

However the paper revealed he was listed as a director at Companies House. Later the company said it would act to remove Mr White as a director.

When asked to explain his involvement in the firm, Mr White tried to distance himself from the company, claiming he was only a named director as part of the takeover deal and had no hands-on involvement.

Mr White, dressed in a black T-shirt with the words Ultimate CPS on the chest, added he had left the clamping industry behind him and was moving on.

When asked what his plans for the future were, Mr White said he was working on something, but had no firm plans at present.

He would only say he was temporarily staying with his friends who ran the White Hart pub in the village of Buxted.

As previously reported by the Daily Echo Mr White left Whites Car Park Solutions in administration with debts of more than £110,000 before it was taken over by Ultimate CPS, who began managing many of the contracts run by Whites.

Mr White was named as a director of the new clamping firm on documents held at Companies House, alongside Graham Deacon and Richard Tufft.

But Mr Tufft told the Daily Echo in March that no one from Ultimate Car Parking Solutions had been in touch with Mr White for several weeks.

He said the clamper had “disappeared” within a week of signing a deal meant to merge his and Mr Deacon’s firm with Whites.

The Daily Echo also obtained legal documents at the start of this month that revealed the extent of the debts of Whites Car Park Solutions and confirmed that Mr White was a director of the new company.

At that time administrator Jim Pretty, of Atherton Bailey in Eastleigh, also said he was trying to trace Mr White but that he was “abroad” and “not contactable”.

He said: “We don’t normally come across one where a director has disappeared.”

The Daily Echo has passed information on his whereabouts to the firm.