The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has led investigations into nuisance marketing, which have resulted in 16 company directors receiving large fines, and then receiving bans from the Insolvency Service from running a company for a cumulative total of 107.5 years.
In a recent case, one individual was banned from being a company director for eight years after his two companies, Your Money Rights Ltd and Miss-Sold Products UK Ltd, were found to have made 220 million automated phone calls in breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. The director applied to Companies House to have the two companies wound up in order to evade total fines of GBP 700,000 (imposed by the ICO in 2017), at which point the ICO referred the matter to the Insolvency Service.
ICO Investigations Group Manager, Andy Curry, explained that 'this is typical of the type of case we refer to the Insolvency Service, where companies are making a high volume of calls, texts or emails and where there is a high risk they will continue to flout the law even after we have taken action.'
This follows the introduction of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendment) Regulations 2018 on 17 December 2018, which provide the ICO with powers to make company directors and other key officers personally liable for the fines imposed for illegal marketing.
The ICO's blog post is available here.
