Six-Year Ban For Director

In non-Bounce Back Loan-related news, Shakar Habib, the director of Vista Training Solutions, had been the company’s director since November 2015. Vista provided training to students through enterprise schemes.

The company entered into Liquidation on 10 February 2020. It had worked with other organisations to deliver apprenticeships across London and most of its funding had been received from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA).

The Insolvency Service carried out their statutory investigations and found that Habib was not able to account for nearly £3.5m from Vista’s accounts, and owed some £2.5m to ESFA.

Investigators discovered that records from April 2019 onwards were missing, and that he had failed to keep adequate company accounts.

It was therefore not possible to verify whether £3.5m of payments from the company during its final year of trading were legitimate. The company’s Liquidator was also unable to account for £525k of assets due to the lack of financial records.

Marc Symons, Deputy Head of Investigations at the Insolvency Service, said:

“Shakar Habib disregarded his legal duty to keep accounting records. But thanks to the joint working between ESFA and the Insolvency Service, he has been removed from the corporate arena for a substantial period.

His ban should be a stark warning to other rogue directors that we will act to protect the public from those who abuse taxpayers’ money.”

Mr Habib’s ban began on 21 November 2023. (He is still listed as an active director of the Company on Companies House, however, at the time of publication.)