Calls for criminal probe into giant
THE collapse of construction giant Carillion should be subject to a criminal investigation.
That’s the position of leading trade union Unite, which has called for more scrutiny into the circumstances surrounding the sudden demise of the firm.
This week will see the one-year anniversary of Carillion’s dramatic descent into insolvency, a development which led to job losses across the country.
Major developments were put on ice because of the shock collapse, including work at the Vaux site in Sunderland and the renovation of the Tyne Pedestrian Tunnel.
Unite has accused the Government of not taking enough action to ensure there wasn’t another “corporate meltdown” after Carillion went into compulsory liquidation on January 15 last year. Unite said the cost to the taxpayer was over £150m, including redundancy pay and “lucrative” work for accountants.
Unite assistant general secretary, Gail Cartmail, said: “It is staggering that a year after the biggest corporate failure in modern UK history the government has carried on as though it is business as normal. The Government’s failure to take action to ensure that there cannot be similar collapses in the future is a betrayal of workers, who still face being cast on the scrapheap without warning because of irresponsible directors who place profits and shareholder dividends before people.
“The fact that no-one involved in Carillion has yet had any form of action taken against them demonstrates either that the regulators are failing to do their jobs or that existing laws are too weak. If it is the latter then we need better, stronger laws.
“Taxpayers were handed a bill of over £150m to clean up the mess left by Carillion, yet the Government has failed to end bandit capitalism in the UK. A year on from Carillion’s collapse the Government needs to stop prevaricating and start taking effective action to drive bandit capitalism out of the UK.”
Work on Sunderland’s Vaux site, which has stood empty since the closure of the brewery in 1999, came grinding to a halt when Carillion shuttered.
It also led to the collapse of a smaller firm, Vaughan Engineering Ltd, which was working on the Tyne Pedestrian Tunnel.
The firm’s legal team was based in Gosforth and was taken over by law firm Clifford Chance, staving off 60 job losses in the process.