The director of a Giffnock-based property development company who was declared bankrupt in 2010 has refused to say whether or not he broke the restrictions placed on a bankrupt person by continuing to act as the director of a company before being discharged.
Kenneth Liddell Tough (72), who runs Giffnock Management Services Ltd (GMS) together with his wife Elspeth (71), was sequestrated at Paisley Sheriff Court on 25 January 2010, for £150,346 in unpaid income tax, national insurance contributions, surcharges and interest to HMRC. He was discharged eleven months later on 21 December 2010.
Despite the fact that Section 11 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 makes it a criminal offence for someone to act as a director of a company while bankrupt without the permission of a court, Tough signed a ten-year lease with a company called Optimus Safety Management on 22 April 2010.
Tough's signing of the lease also appears to be in contravention of GMS's own articles of association which state that a "person ceases to be a director by virtue of any provision of the [Companies] Act or is prohibited from being a director by law".
The lease that Tough signed whilst bankrupt was for one of GMS's four office buildings known as "Aspect 32" at the Arnhall Business Park at Westhill in Aberdeenshire, some six miles west of Aberdeen.
Information held at Companies House also shows that Tough was registered as director of 12 other companies during the period of his bankruptcy.
The law also makes it an offence to manage a company without court permission and Tough has declined to tell this newspaper whether he applied to the court for such permission.
The involvement of the Accountant in Bankruptcy (AiB), the public body responsible for administering insolvencies in Scotland, in the administration of Kenneth Tough's sequestration came to an end in June 2014 when the AiB's trusteeship was discharged.
The AiB has the ability to reopen a case if sufficient new evidence is found. Grounds for reopening a case could include undeclared assets which should have vested with the trustee in bankruptcy at the time of sequestration.
A police spokesperson told this newspaper: "Police Scotland has not received a complaint however information has been provided to police and enquiries are ongoing to establish whether any crime has been committed."
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