GENSOCIAL
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has started company director disqualification proceedings against eight current and former directors of collapsed construction giant Carillion, the Insolvency Service said.
Carillion was wound up in January, 2018, and the Official Receiver submitted a report about the conduct of each director.
Mr Kwarteng has decided it would be in the public interest for a court to make an order disqualifying the directors on the grounds their conduct made them unfit to be concerned in the management of a company.
Thousands of jobs were lost following the collapse of the firm, which was seen as one of the biggest ever corporate failures in the UK.
“We can confirm that on 12 January the Secretary of State issued company director disqualification proceedings in the public interest against eight directors and former directors of Carillion,” an Insolvency Service spokesman said in a statement.
The proceedings will name Richard Adam, Richard Howson, Zafar Khan, Keith Cochrane, Andrew Dougal, Phillip Green, Alison Horner and Ceri Powell, it is understood.
Anyone subject to disqualification orders could be bound by a range of restrictions including not being allowed to be a director of any UK-registered company or any overseas firm which has connections with the UK.
At the time of Carillion’s collapse, unions led criticism of the company’s executives and auditors, and of the handling of public sector contracts by private companies.
A new book on the collapse released this week – Bandit Capitalism: Carillion and the Corruption of the British State, by Bob Wylie – said workers and taxpayers had been left to pick up the tab for the collapse, while no-one had yet been held to account.
