Mid-Ulster’s failed companies rack up £23m debt
FAILED business directors in the Mid-Ulster area have been charged with financial mismanagement after their bankrupt companies racked up just over £23m in debts.
The Department of Enterprise has banned from the boardroom a total of 8 Mid-Ulster-based directors in the past year, including three from Magherafelt, completing a spectacular fall from grace for some family-run businesses.
The failed companies include Magherafelt-based Inclusive Waste Management Limited which went bust with £847,007 worth of debt.
The company carried out waste management and waste processing from premises at Central Park, Mallusk Road, Newtownabbey.
Other companies charged with financial failings include SH Moore & Sons Limited based in Pomeroy which went bust with £20m debts, and Dungannon-based Terann Developments, which owed £750,000.
Over the last year, boardroom bans have been handed out to Magherafelt men Stephen Patrick McLarnon (39) of Drumard Hill, Gulladuff, Michael George McLarnon (46) of Hazeldene Park, and Paul James McLarnon (50) of Grange Road, for causing and permitting Inclusive Waste Management Limited to file false and misleading accounts.
The company went bust owing £321,324 in unpaid taxes.
Director disqualifications have also been given to Dungannon’s Terence Corrigan (56) and his 55-year-old wife Ann Marie, Ballygawley man Francis Patrick Horisk (32), and Pomeroy couple Samuel (57) and Lorna (56) Moore and their 34-year-old son Stephen.
A lifestyle of big-spending was revealed by the disqualification of the Moore family as directors. The Pomeroy couple were charged by the Department of Enterprise for “permitting the company to to allow excessive expenditure to be incurred by purchasing a helicopter for £496,800 in June 2007 and a rally car for £470,000 in January 2008, the sale of which items after liquidation resulted in a loss to creditors of £561,300.”
It has now emerged that the family continued to flash the cash even when they could no longer afford it.
The business failures have cost the government almost £1m in lost taxes and resulted in dozens of job losses.
According to the Department of Enterprise, the Corrigans received boardroom bans of a decade each for their conduct while running their property company.
They admitted they had allowed £1.07m to be transferred from the business account into accounts in their own names.
The length of the couple’s bans is at the higher end of DETI penalties for directors’ misconduct of two years to 15 years disqualification. DETI said disqualification periods of 10 years and over were reserved for ‘particularly serious’ cases.
Across Northern Ireland, the department has accepted 24 disqualification Undertakings and the Court has made eight orders disqualifying directors in the financial year commencing 1 April 2012.
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Monday 20 May 2013
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