Fined for exposing risks of fake director details
a Here’s an outcome I didn’t expect in 2013 when I wrote about a businessman’s efforts to highlight how easy it is for crooks to set up limited companies using fake details.
Kevin Brewer registered Lib Dem leader Vince Cable, the then Business Secretary, as the director of a company without his authorisation.
He then wrote to Mr Cable explaining what he’d done and why.
“It cannot be right that anyone in the world can form a UK company for business activities yet can use any name and address they like, even totally fictitious ones,” Mr Brewer told Mr Cable.
“To illustrate the point we have formed a company in your name without your consent and knowledge and could start trading using your identity.”
I covered his stunt at the time in this column, revealing how Companies House admitted that it did not have the power to verify information sent by directors.
He repeated the trick in 2016, feeling that nothing had changed, this time making the Minister with responsibility for Companies House, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, a director without her consent.
Mr Brewer was angry that agencies such as his own National Business Register carry out identity checks on people applying to be directors while the online Companies House system for forming companies had no such safeguards.
Far from being congratulated for exposing this sorry state of affairs, 65-year-old Mr Brewer from Ullenhall in Warwickshire has now been prosecuted for filing false information on the UK’s company register and fined £1,602 with costs of £10,462.
Vince Cable is not impressed, calling the prosecution “heavy-handed” and warning that the use of fraudulent names is “a growing concern”. Mr Brewer said: “I highlighted an issue then wrote to those concerned, told them what I had done and asked to meet to discuss the problems, but was ignored and then out of the blue they decided to prosecute me for being a whistleblower. ”
Companies House says he was warned after setting up the first fake company and insists: “Deliberately filing false information on the register is a serious offence and people who have been found to have knowingly done this can face prosecution.”
Business Minister Andrew Griffiths crowed about how the prosecution was “the first of its kind”.
So the only time someone has been prosecuted for filing fake information to Companies House is when it was done with good intentions.
PS Companies House still does not check the identity of would-be directors.