The sharp shooters at the Insolvency Service have their eyes trained on reprobate directors who have looked the NTI newsroom’s tip for the next James Bond, our own Covid superhero, Rishi Sunak, in the eye one moment, only to spit in it months later.
One such cad is Raashid Khan from Birmingham, who has been roasted by the Service, being disqualified as a director for 12 years after fraudulently claiming £50,000 through the Bounce Back Loan Scheme before transferring the full amount out of the company’s account to himself just days before his company went into Administration. Can you actually believe what your eyes are reading?
This story only makes us gasp because we know the details of it, which are still fresh, but there could be thousands more in the pipeline as the immorality of directors wilts under the glare of an investigatory super-trouper in the months to come.
We in the NTI newsroom think Khan’s bank could have been slightly more suspicious when they advanced the loan, as his company was (we kid you not) called Ikandy Wholesale Ltd. ‘Ikandy’, eh? What could such a company be set up to do? Of course, the buying and selling of such naturally linked commodities as fireworks and fresh meat.
The facts of the case tell us that Khan forged a document to convince his bank that a winding-up order against Ikandy had been revoked, and this allowed him to transfer around £70,000 out of the account, including a £50,000 Bounce Back Loan, which he had secured less than two weeks previously.
Since February of this year the Insolvency Service has successfully petitioned the courts to wind-up five companies that have been involved in abusing Government loans, introduced to help businesses during the pandemic. These include a furniture retailer in Manchester, and two Glasgow-based companies, for which no legitimate business activity was identified since at least January 2020.
Two of the companies secured Bounce Back Loans, at least one of which was procured on the basis of false information. One of the Glasgow-based companies also secured two Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans totalling £240,000 on the basis of false information.
There are bad people out there and we can sleep easier in our beds knowing that a team of caped heroes from the Insolvency Service are working their way through a list. They could be at the bottom of your road right now …
