Watchdog powerless to stop cold-calling kingpins dodging the regulations

company and start another. In one glaring example, Reactiv Media, a company fined £75,000, was shut down but its owner, Tony Abbott, has opened another in its place.

Mr Abbott, who denies any wrongdoing and has accused

of getting its facts wrong, spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on his wedding at the Savoy Hotel in London last month, bought a £1 million home in Surrey; and owns Bentley, McLaren and Porsche sports cars.

A investigation also discovered that 15 out of 20 companies penalised by the ICO for nuisance calls have gone bust or declared themselves insolvent to avoid the fine.

Mr Graham, who has headed the ICO for seven years, said: “The Information Commissioner needs increased powers. There should be personal liability for directors of companies so they cannot just shrug their shoulders and close down and then open up as something else. We need more effective action

“It is very frustrating. We impose these fines and it’s the devil’s own work to collect the money.”

He said the ICO had been instrumental in changing the law to make it easier to fine cold-calling companies breaking the rules. Total fines had risen from £360,000 in the year to April 2015 to more than £2million in the following 12 months.

He said the ICO was “currently actively pursuing nine companies that have gone into liquidation” after being fined. Mr Graham added: “We are using specialist insolvency practitioners to help us trace the money. But it is certainly a problem.”

He said one of the great surprises during his tenure was “to find cold calling was being driven by some very worthy charities”, adding: “We had work to do to bring everybody back in line. That work is ongoing and our investigations are ongoing”.

Elizabeth Denham, a Canadian who led a high-profile privacy investigation into Facebook, will take over as Information Commissioner later this month.