The boss of a payroll services company has been disqualified from acting as a director for seven years for failing to keep proper accounts, which meant transactions worth £15m went unexplained.

Greg Middleton was director of Sigma Labour Services Ltd, based in Essex, which was set up in May 2009 and entered voluntary liquidation two years later.

An investigation by the Insolvency Service (IS) found that the company's records failed to establish when it had started trading or the nature of its business, while £15m of transactions in and out of the company's bank account could not be explained. As a result, the IS said it was not possible to establish the company's true tax debt.

Mark Bruce, a chief examiner in the IS's company investigation teams south said: 'The substantial period of this disqualification reflects the fact that when a company fails to keep adequate financial records, it could lead to other, more serious, impropriety in relation to the management of its affairs. The sheer scale of unexplained transactions during the last 11 months of this company's trading raises serious questions.'

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