Brothers banned after investors lose £2.5m
By Bridging Loan Directory
Two brothers, whose property business traded from Blackpool, have each been banned from acting as directors for 11 years after investors lost £2.5m on off-plan property deals.
The 52-year old twins Paul and Peter Aspden were directors of Independent Property Consultants which sold off-plan properties in Bulgaria and the Cape Verde islands which investors never received.
The brothers, who now live in Cape Verde, were disqualified for making misleading statements to investors who paid £1.5m for apartments at four Bulgarian developments and £1m for units at Cape Verde’s Sal Vista resort.
Their business was wound up by the government in the public interest in 2010 with debts of £2.5m. Investigators from the Insolvency Service also found that “inadequate ringfencing” led to at least £643,244 of clients’ funds being lost.
Ken Beasley, official receiver at the Insolvency Service’s public interest unit, said:
“The Aspden brothers were responsible for significant financial losses suffered by members of the public who never received the foreign properties they paid for. The company misled its customers into making payments for foreign properties and then the directors recklessly failed to protect this money
“By handing down 11-year disqualifications, the court has shown that such conduct by directors will not be tolerated. The Insolvency Service will take tough action to put a stop to companies trading against the public interest and we will seek to remove culpable directors from the business environment.”
FOLLOW ON GOOGLE NEWS
