Darcella Ltd offered heavily discounted hospitality packages to businesses for popular music and sporting events such as the Six Nations, Cheltenham Gold Cup and the BRIT Awards, targeting companies with lavish hospitality packages costing up to £6,000.

Over a six-month period from September 2022 to March 2023, Darcella earned more than half a million pounds after companies were duped into buying tickets for non-existent but heavily discounted hospitality packages. Literally days before the events, Darcella cancelled the packages but never paid customers any refunds.

The Midlands based company was incorporated in May 2020 and had two directors, Alister Clark and majority shareholder Jagvir Singh Kaur, both of whom resigned in July 2022.  

A spate of complaints about the company led to the opening of an Insolvency Service investigation, which found that Darcella traded under the name Corinthian Group and claimed to be a large-scale provider of hospitality packages to other companies.

Investigators believed the name was chosen as it was very similar to an existing company operating in the same sector which it had no involvement with.

There was no evidence Darcella had the rights to sell any event packages or that they had any tickets available. The company told clients the tickets had become available due to a cancellation.

In the immediate run-up to events, Darcella contacted the customers to cancel the bookings, which were each worth on average £6,000, promising a refund and free tickets to another event, which never materialised.

Customers were offered packages at significant discounts of as much as 50% off the original price.

Darcella made repeated promises to clients that their tickets would arrive imminently when they received complaints that the packages had not been received.

No refunds were ever made and the Insolvency Service concluded that there had never been any relationship between Darcella and the venues themselves, many of which have exclusive contracts with other hospitality providers.

Darcella’s turnover from September 2022 to March 2023 was in excess of £500,000, making it eligible for VAT payments, but it had never paid anything to HMRC. An estimated £100,000 in VAT would have been payable to HMRC.

The 2022 year end accounts at Companies House showed that the business had £346,900 in assets, down from £584,143 in 2021. Over that period Clark was the sole director. 

Since the investigation started, Darcella failed to maintain a registered office and the company website, phone and email contacts no longer work.

The company also refused to co-operate with the Insolvency Service’s investigation and submit up-to-date accounts to Companies House.

David Usher, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: ‘Darcella convinced businesses to pay for top corporate hospitality at some of the biggest music and sporting events on the calendar when they had no rights to sell the packages or any tickets to sell.

‘Worse still, clients were left significantly out of pocket through no fault of their own when they failed to make refunds after cancelling their bookings at short notice.

‘Our investigations found no evidence of any legitimate trading by Darcella which is why we applied to have it wound-up in the public interest.’

The company was wound up at the High Court in Manchester on 23 April.

The Official Receiver has been appointed as liquidator of the company.

All enquiries should be made to the Official Receiver of the Public Interest Unit Email: [email protected]