The Government has started legal proceedings to bar eight former directors of the collapsed construction company Carillion from top boardroom positions.
The Insolvency Service said it was seeking to disqualify the directors ‘in the public interest’ from acting as UK company directors.
The announcement by the new business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng was made on the eve of the third anniversary of Carillion’s collapse in 2018 with £7 billion of liabilities and the loss of thousands of jobs.
The Insolvency Service confirmed that on 12 January the secretary of state had issued company director disqualification proceedings in the public interest against eight directors and former directors of Carillion. This could mean they will be barred from company directorships and senior management positions for between two and 15 years.
Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail said: “Carillion’s collapse was not a victimless white-collar crime as thousands of workers lost their jobs. If executives and directors had reported honestly on Carillion’s financial predicament, many of those job losses could have been avoided.
“We would like to see those responsible for the Carillion debacle to be charged and appear in court. Without a doubt Carillion had been trading while insolvent for some time before its collapse.
“The events behind the Carillion collapse demonstrated everything that is wrong with corporate law in the UK; a failure to act before a company collapses and very slow investigations.
“New business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has injected a much-needed impetus into the Carillion affair, but needs to cast his net wider to clean up the culture of ‘bandit capitalism’ across the UK corporate environment with a strong system of regulation and enforcement.
“Only by taking much more robust action can shareholders, employees, customers and, more widely, the general public be reassured that collapses such as Carillion won’t be repeated. It was a stain on the UK’s corporate reputation.”
