Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, how many cases of alleged fraudulent voluntary insolvency of companies have been the subject of investigation in the last three years where the Department, agencies or regulators have been aware that potential victims of the alleged fraud were being pursued by administrators or insolvency practitioners.

Fraudulent voluntary insolvency is not an investigation criterion used by the Insolvency Service. The Insolvency Service holds data on insolvency practitioner appointments and the directors of insolvent companies. However, its case management systems cannot match these datasets to identify insolvent companies that have both the same directors and the same insolvency practitioner

Insolvency practitioners must report to the Insolvency Service on directors’ conduct. These reports do not record whether an insolvency practitioner is pursuing potential victims of alleged fraud. The requested figures are not held centrally and only could be produced through a manual review which would incur disproportionate cost.