Officials have dropped a criminal investigation into a firm of insolvency practitioners accused of a multimillion-pound fee fraud.
Sheffield-based P&A Partnership had been accused of cheating creditors of scores of businesses out of millions of pounds through overcharging. But the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has now abandoned its investigation after deciding that continuing was “not likely to lead to the gathering of sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction”.
Last year Christopher White and Andrew Wood – both former partners at P&A and joint administrators of FW Mason & Sons – were accused of fraud, misfeasance or breach of fiduciary duty by liquidators from Grant Thornton. Grant Thornton is also understood to be looking at scores of other businesses where it suspects excessive fees may have been charged by P&A. (The Times, Page: 37, 40)
James Sinclair for Business Recorder says that this yet again highlights how small creditors are prevented from receiving what is due to them. When a small business owner receives notice that their customer has gone insolvent, owing them for unpaid invoices, there has always been the doubt they will ever see a penny.
It is often the perception that insolvency practioners are only interested in covering their own fees and are not interested in maximising the return to unsecured creditors. Cases like this will not do much to change that perception.