Bankrupt slips through net...again
A.A. writes: In 2012, you published an article headed ‘Bankruptcy bar doesn’t deter director Forster’. It was about Charles Patrick Forster, but despite still being an undischarged bankrupt and a banned director, he has set up and is running two more limited companies, Firefly Welding Limited and, with his teacher wife Julia, IPWL Limited. Seven years after your article, I find it astounding that there is still no deterrent or checking procedure to monitor long-term bankrupts and banned directors. THE Government’s Insolvency Service keeps a public record of bankrupts and sure enough, this shows that Forster, of Skipton in North Yorkshire, has been bankrupt since 1997. He cannot be a company director unless he gets special permission from a court.
Yet as I reported in 2012, he had since 1997 been a director of five companies. One – a construction business – went bust with debts of several hundred thousand pounds, leading to a further ten-year directorship ban on top of the automatic prohibition that stops any bankrupt from forming or managing a limited company.
Despite all this, company records show that last October, Forster and his accountant Robert Gough formed Firefly Welding Limited, each owning half the business, but with Gough as the sole director. Forster does not appear in the records of IPWL Limited. This company makes a piece of welding kit called – surprise, surprise – Firefly, but there is nothing to stop a teacher and an accountant from owning and running a welding business.
Neither Charles Forster nor his wife Julia replied to invitations to comment. Robert Gough told me that he runs IPWL, with Forster as an employee. And he added: ‘I recently set up Firefly Welding Limited, not Mr Forster. I am the only director.’
True, but it is illegal for Forster to form a company, not just act as a director. I would have expected his accountant to know this. When I pointed it out, Gough told me: ‘Given the way this shareholding can be misconstrued, I have cancelled Mr Forster’s shareholding.’ Forster’s shares now appear under Gough’s name.
Companies House officials have accepted this, telling me they have no investigative powers. The Insolvency Service was more blunt, saying: ‘We take potential breaches of disqualifications and bankruptcies seriously and actively consider all intelligence received.’