Axiom Ince went into administration last October after forensic accountants discovered that £66m in client funds was missing from bank accounts with Barclays and State Bank of India, while financial records were incomplete.

HMRC is owed nearly £6m in unpaid taxes and has submitted a claim for two separate tax bills, the first for £4,479,102 as a secondary preferential creditor, and a second for £1,400,259, identified as an unsecured creditor amount, leaving an unpaid tax bill of £5,879,361.

The latest report issued by joint administrators, Neil Bennett, Alex Cadwallader and Andrew Poxon of Leonard Curtis indicated they were still adjudicating on the HMRC claim and warned that ‘while the estimated outcome statement currently shows no return to any class of creditor, this is because the joint administrators have no way of providing a worthwhile estimate of the asset realisations, and these are currently listed as uncertain’.

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