Private Sector

Almost two thirds of all director bans last year, which included people working in the property industry, were related to misconduct and fraud related to covid loans although most avoided criminal prosecution, the Insolvency Service’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2023-24 shows.

The latest statistics released by the Insolvency Service this week shows the level of work the agency carried out in 2023-24 to tackle Covid loan abuse.

Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from two crashes of 737 Max jetliners that killed 346 people after the American government determined the firm had breached an agreement that had protected it from prosecution for more than three years, the US justice department has said.

https://news.stv.tv/world/boeing-accepts-plea-deal-to-avoid-criminal-trial-over-737-max-crashes

Earlier this week, Buckinghamshire-based businessman Aasim Johar was jailed for seven years for his role in a £3.3m cleaning products fraud at the University of Edinburgh which ran from 2005 until 2015. Johar had been acting together with Geoff Turnbull who, at the time of the offence, was the university’s assistant director of estates and buildings. Sally Clark looks at the case.

https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/sally-clark-edinburgh-university-fraud-case-highlights-risk-to-employers

A woman whose crimes cost her employer hundreds of thousands of pounds has been jailed for more than three years, following a police investigation.

Louise Chambers, 41, from Thirsk, worked as finance manager for a group of Knaresborough-based companies from March 2021 to November 2022, when she was dismissed.

The ex-finance chief of Patisserie Valerie has been charged with fraud after the bakery chain collapsed in one of the biggest accounting scandals to rock the UK High Street in recent years.

Christopher Marsh and his wife Louise have both been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, four years after the cafe company tumbled into administration.

A car dealer from Omagh has been found guilty at Newry Crown Court of advertising and selling 'clocked' cars including reducing the mileage of a VW Scirocco by 52,000 miles.

The Trading Standards Service brought the case against Samuel McConnell, director of SMC Cars & Commercials, and Ryan McKittrick, a sales executive of the same company.

https://www.am-online.com/news/car-dealer-sales-executive-plead-guilty-in-systematic-clocking-scam

A FORMER director of a haulage firm has been jailed after a “brazen” fraud involving billing a client for police escorts, some of which never happened.

James Campbell, 51, a director of West of Scotland Heavy Haulage Limited, overcharged a Spanish company by £110,000 for the transportation of wind turbine parts by tampering with invoices from the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) and South Wales Police

A fraudulent builder who left work not completed or to a poor standard and built one of the worst extensions that a surveyor had ever seen, has been found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison.

https://westbridgfordwire.com/fraudulent-builder-who-built-the-worst-extension-ever-seen-sentenced-at-nottingham-crown-court/

A fraudster who conned elderly and vulnerable residents out of £1.5m for renewable energy and home safety products has been sentenced to seven years imprisonment alongside a 10-year directorship ban.

https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/eastmidlands/news/2086749-fraudster-jailed-for-1.5m-renewable-energy-scam

Richard Furlong considers the liability of company directors for criminal wrongdoing by their employees.

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 expanded corporate liability by widening the identification doctrine from the old “directing mind and will”test to a new “senior manager”test. My colleague Vanessa Reid wrote a very helpful article on these changes in December, available here.