By Harry Mottram: Suppliers and customers of Yorkshire Windows have been left out of pocket after the Rotherham company when it went bust on February 19th. One customer who lost his £3,000 deposit won’t be too impressed by the fact it went bust in 2017 and has now said it has been taken over by Unity Home Improvement although there’s no news of whether the creditors will get paid. The owner Ian Chester has been reported by The Star newspaper as having set up a new windows firm – such are the ups and downs of the glazing and new doors industry.
Book publisher
Meanwhile Print Week has reported on the demise of Cornish book publisher TJ Books who have appointed James Saunders of KR8 Advisory and Gareth Wilcox of Opus Restructuring as administrators. Journalist Richard Stuart-Turner gave some of the background which included that last summer Craig Johns and Jason Elliott of Cowgills were appointed as administrators of Wakefield-based H Charlesworth & Co Ltd – which traded as Charlesworth Press. This was a couple of months after it was merged with TJ Books creating the Fortis Print Group.
Richard Stuart-Turner explained that after buying Charlesworth in a pre-pack deal the company had ‘bought all of Charlesworth’s assets from the administrator, enabling it to continue to operate out of Wakefield.’
Director in court
The loans offered through a Government scheme to firms during the Covid Crisis have seen numerous abuses with company directors fraudulently claiming Bounce Back Loans which were not used to help their companies. Hundreds of company directors have been investigated and many charged with fraud with the Government having to write off billions of pounds in the ill-thought-out scheme.
The latest director to be bought to book is Henrique Esteves Fazzio who has been disqualified from acting as a director for 10 years because of his conduct at Quink For Prints Limited. Jo Francis for Print Week reported that he had overstated his firm’s turnover and, ‘made an application to the bank for a BBL of £50,000 and stated the annual turnover for Quink for 2019 was £213,812.’
She continued: “However, financial accounts for the year-ended 30 September 2019 showed actual turnover of £57,643, meaning Quink received £29,278 more than it was entitled to from the BBL scheme.”
Bonnie and Clyde
Readers and some printers who were ripped off may recall the duo who became known as ‘The Bonnie and Clyde of the Printing Industry,’ a few years back. Their name was coined by Jonathan Haskell – father of the England rugby player – after he was ripped off by them. Neill Malcolm Stuart John and Clair Hunnisett would advertise online operating under a variety of names such as Printed Books Ltd, Book Printer UK, The Printing Press and UK, Litho Printing Limited and Paper Press Limited and Paperback Printer, Bookworld Ltd and Hardback Printer Ltd, which were all guises for the same operation run by the same people. The con was to ask for money up front from printing books, magazines, brochures etc and then er… no delivery. For printers who did print some of the orders – they were simply not paid. Eventually the couple split up and John got hitched to businesswoman Krystal St John in South Wales.
ICSM ran a campaign to bring them to book by bringing together the scores of printers, publishers, paper suppliers and members of the public who also fell victim to their scams which eventually saw them exposed and the main fraudster convicted in court. John was disqualified as a company director for eight years and it was hoped he would go back to being a salesman – his original vocation. There were reports he continued to run scams in the printing business trading as Book Printer UK but after his lavish marriage to Krystal he left his activities in the industry.
Recently members of the public have updated us on the career of the con man with reports he had been alleged to have operated a cannabis farm. I have heard from a landlord in Wales whose property was used by John and Krystal St John until the discovery of the farm when the duo up and left.
For more stories on the John see; https://www.icsmcredit.com/news/viewpost.php?id=464
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ICSM CREDIT
For information on ICSM visit www.icsmcredit.com or call 0844 854 1850.
ICSM, The Exchange, Express Park, Bristol Road, Bridgwater, Somerset TA6 4RR. Tel: 0844 854 1850. www.icsmcredit.com. Ian.carrotte@icsmcredit.com