Robert Scappaticci, the director of a Manchester-based ice cream company, has been disqualified for six-and-a-half years for failing to ensure that the company maintained or preserved adequate accounting records
The company Gerards Ice Cream Co Ltd, which also included fast food outlets, entered voluntary liquidation on 15 September 2014 with an estimated deficiency of £373,839.
An Insolvency Service investigation found that six months prior to liquidation the ownership of a chip shop was transferred to a third party but without adequate accounting records it was not possible to verify the terms of sale or the extent to which the chip shop business may have been an asset in the liquidation.
Therefore it is possible that creditors were denied money owed to them.
Robert Clarke, group leader of insolvent investigations at The Insolvency Service, said: ‘In this particular case, the director transferred a valuable company asset, without ensuring the company operated in a transparent way by providing sufficient records to explain the transfer. As a result, innocent creditors may have lost out.’
