Timber company director is disqualified for accounting records failings
Robert Ewan Wynne disqualified as a company director for failing to ensure proper records were kept, filing returns and paying tax.
Mr Wynne, 45, of Mold, Clwyd, the sole director of Shropshire Treated Timbers Limited, a timber merchant, was disqualified from acting as a company director for eight years, by Wrexham County Court on 1 September for failing to ensure the company kept proper books and records and complied with statutory obligations relating to filing of returns and making required payments to HMRC.
Mr Wynne’s disqualification follows an investigation by the Insolvency Service.
The disqualification order means that Mr Wynne is not allowed to act as a director or take part in the management or control of any limited company until 2022, without leave of the Court.
Commenting on Mr Wynne’s disqualification, Robert Clarke, Head of Insolvent Investigations North at The Insolvency Service, said:
Directors have a duty to make sure that their companies maintain proper accounting records, and, following insolvency, deliver them to the Insolvency Practitioner, in the interests of fairness and transparency.
Without a full account of transactions it is impossible to determine whether a director has discharged his duties properly, or is using a lack of documentation as a cloak for impropriety. Mr Wynne cannot now carry on in business other than at his own risk.
The investigation found that Mr Wynne failed to maintain, preserve and deliver up adequate accounting records and as a result it was not possible to fully account for the company’s income and expenditure, reconcile the asset position and director’s loan account from the last accounts to the date of liquidation or verify liabilities at that date.
Mr Wynne also failed to ensure the company complied with its statutory obligations to file VAT, Corporations Tax and PAYE returns to HM Revenue and Customs and make the requisite payments from at least April 2009 onwards.
Notes to editors
Shropshire Treated Timbers Limited - CRO No. 06408776 was incorporated on 25 October 2007 and was placed into Administration on 15 December 2011.
A disqualification order has the effect that without specific permission of a court, a person with a disqualification cannot
- act as a director of a company
- take part, directly or indirectly, in the promotion, formation or management of a company or limited liability partnership
- act as an insolvency practitioner
- be a receiver of a company’s property
In addition many other restrictions are placed on disqualified directors by other regulations.
Disqualification undertakings are the administrative equivalent of a disqualification order but do not involve court proceedings. Further information on director disqualifications and restrictions is available.
The Insolvency Service administers the insolvency regime, investigating all compulsory liquidations and individual insolvencies (bankruptcies) through the Official Receiver to establish why they became insolvent. It may also use powers under the Companies Act 1985 to conduct confidential fact-finding investigations into the activities of live limited companies in the UK. In addition, the agency authorises and regulates the insolvency profession, deals with disqualification of directors in corporate failures, assesses and pays statutory entitlement to redundancy payments when an employer cannot or will not pay employees, provides banking and investment services for bankruptcy and liquidation estate funds and advises ministers and other government departments on insolvency law and practice. Further information about the work of the Insolvency Service, and how to complain about financial misconduct, is available.