Doesn't matter what the law says, it's remarkably easy to rip people off and move on to go do it again,
Ain't that the sad truth.
One problem is that some Insolvency Practitioners can't be bothered to investigate the motives of directors and whether their actions have been negligent, fraudulent or just plain incompetent (the latter not being against the law). IPs are, not surprisingly very busy at the moment and they just want the preferential creditors (mortgage holders, HMRC etc) paid as quickly as possible and move on to the next one.
I spent a couple of hours today going through, and signing, a witness statement for the BIS Fraud department. This is unrelated to "our friends" but it confirmed to me that it can be comparatively easy to take people for a ride. Let's just say a gentleman who had already been disqualified as a director TWICE for 25 years was able to set up another company by using someone else's name. All he needed was that person's date of birth (not necessarily the real date of birth) and an address (not necessarily the real address) to form the company. Then, by role playing, pretend to be that person by opening credit accounts with businesses. A dodgy forged signature and he's away. Since he never paid any creditors, he didn't need a bank account.
However, over a lunchtime beer with said fraud investigator, I was heartened to hear that they are very interested in cases of company fraud and negligence.
One issue to be considered is that the people who remain are only there in order to get their entitlement to statutory redundancy from the National Insurance Fund.
Cheers
Whirls