Nuisance calls firm is chased for £500,000
Enforcement action by industry watchdog
DIRECTORS of a Scottish company fined half a million pounds for generating 1.6million nuisance phone calls a day are now facing enforcement action after failing to stump up.
CRDNN Limited’s offices at Clydebank Business Park were raided by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in March 2018.
Computer equipment and paperwork seized revealed the staggering scale of the operation and in March this year the ICO imposed the maximum fine, £500,000, for a breach of the Electronic Communications Regulations
Now, it has confirmed that with the fine not paid, it has passed the matter to its Financial Recovery Unit and enforcement action has started against its directors.
One of them, Duncan Paul, who lives in Glasgow’s plush Bearsden suburb, incorporated a new company, DP HR International Limited, on March 2 this year, the same day the ICO announced its fine.
Paul resigned as a director of CRDNN in December last year, but Companies House shows he has further active directorships with Selfie Nails Ltd, based in London, and Letsgetfishing Ltd, at Clydebank Business Park.
However, Paul made an application in April this year to strike Selfie Nails Ltd – involved in “hairdressing and other beauty treatment” – from the register of companies.
Letsgetfishing is concerned with “retail sale via mail order houses or via internet” and Paul is listed as the sole director, appointed in November 2017.
He also resigned as a director of Apollo Creed Ltd, based in Giffnock, Glasgow, in March last year. Its activities were described as “other information service activities not elsewhere classified”.
Fellow director Stephen Alexander Foote, also listed as a former director of CRDNN, previously called Contact Reach Digital Ltd, resigned from Apollo Creed Ltd at the same time as Duncan. He also resigned as a director of CRDNN in September 2018 but a new director, named as Stephen Foot, was appointed on December 7 last year, a day before Paul resigned.
Companies House records show that Stephen Alexander Foote and Stephen Foot were both born in July 1979.
Andy Curry, head of investigations at the ICO, said: “The directors of CRDNN knowingly operated their business with a complete disregard for the law. They did all they could to evade detection, from changing and not updating address details, to transferring their operation abroad and attempting to go into liquidation.”