Debt help firm shut down by watchdog

Court told that bosses have siphoned off customers’ money

HUNDREDS of people who are already struggling with money problems have been left even worse off by the collapse of a debt management company.

Total Debt Relief Limited was put into compulsory liquidation at the High Court in the public interest, after a case brought by the Financial Conduct Authority.

No one from the company was there to oppose the action – I expect they want to keep as far away as possible from any court.

Barrister Simon Jones for the FCA told the hearing that substantial sums had been transferred out of the UK in chunks of £250,000, £200,000 and £150,000.

“It appears these funds have been misappropriated and taken out of this jurisdiction to the United States,” he said.

“We say there’s no legitimate business purpose for doing this. There’s no reason for it to be moving around these accounts in this manner.”

Total Debt Relief of Stockport, Manchester, has around 500 customers who pay in a regular monthly amount.

A nominal £2 is taken from this money each month to pay their creditors, and the rest was supposed to build into a pot that Total Debt could use to negotiate a final settlement for their debts.

Earlier this year it was issued with a warning notice by the Financial Conduct Authority, which said that it might not renew its interim permission to operate.

This was followed by a supervisory notice, banning Total Debt from selling assets such as its client database to other companies. One of the directors, 36-year-old Sarah Tabor-thickett, of Stockport, then resigned, having been on the board since 2015.

That left the business in the hands of the second director, Eric Puzaitzer, and the company secretary Lawrence Kopylov, who both live in America. The High Court was told that the money that left Total Debt ended up in US companies Total Relief Marketing Solutions and KLM Management Operations, controlled by Puzaitzer and Kopylov.

Last week Ms Tabor-thickett spoke briefly to the Mirror from her semi-detached home in Stockport.

“I was the operations manager but I resigned,” she said.

“You honestly need to speak to the directors because they are the people who knew what was happening.

“I have been very poorly this year and I have not really been there.”

When challenged that she was a director when a warning notice was issued by the FCA, she replied: “I was, but I had already started breaking away from them at that point.”

Asked if she knew that funds were being siphoned into US bank accounts, she replied: “Absolutely not. If I had, I would have reported it immediately to the FCA. There is not much I can tell you.”

She said she sympathised with clients who had lost money and added: “It is not something that I would have wanted to happen to anyone.

“I have not benefitted from it and I have not taken any money.

“I am not very comfortable talking about this.

“This is my property and I would ask you to leave.”

RESIGNED Sarah Tabor-thickett