MS CAROLINE JANET ROWELL

Disqualified from

2023-05-09

Date of birth on record

February 1980

Caroline Janet Rowell (“Ms Rowell”) caused O’Leary’s Bar Ltd (“OLB”) to enter into transactions to the detriment of its creditors when she knew it was insolvent by transferring funds amounting to £21,100 from the company bank account after 01 March 2020, following the decision to place OLB into creditors voluntary liquidation. 1) On 01 March 2020 she signed a document confirming the terms of engagement of Kay Johnson Gee, which concluded that OLB was insolvent and steps should be taken to place it into Creditors Voluntary Liquidation 2) On 29 April 2020 a refund from Sefton MBC amounting to £25,000 was paid into OLB’s current account increasing the balance to £24,928. 3) Of this amount £13,100 was paid to her on 29 April 2020. £11,100 from OLB’s current account and a further £2,000 from OLB’s savings account. 4) The refund was also used to make further payments amounting to £8,000 to her from OLB’s savings account on 29 and 30 April 2020. 5) From the refund monies payments totalling £3,795 were made to creditors of OLB but those were not to creditors outstanding at liquidation, who were owed £37,750. By 01 May 2020 OLB’s bank accounts account had a balance of £32. 6) She has provided no explanation with regard to these transactions Ms Rowell caused OLB to obtain a Business Bounce Back Loan of £30,000 when she knew or ought to have known that OLB had no prospect of repaying it as OLB was insolvent and she had taken the decision to place OLB into creditors voluntary liquidation, in that: 1) On 01 March 2020 she signed a document confirming the terms of engagement of Kay Johnson Gee, which concluded that OLB was insolvent and steps should be taken to place it into Creditors Voluntary Liquidation 2) On 4 May 2020 HM Treasury launched Bounce Back Loans to enable small business’ to apply and receive 100% government backed loans of between £2,000 and £50,000 via an online application process. 3) On 06 May 2020, a £30,000 bounce back loan was credited to OLB’s bank account resulting in a balance of £30,032. 4) Of the £30,000, £5,000 was paid to an individual named “Janet” on the bank statements and £5,000 was paid to an ex-director. £1,982 was paid to 2 creditors outstanding at liquidation and £2,993 was paid to apparent creditors (not listed in the statement of affairs). OLB received £5,744 in 2 payments from HMRC for furlough payments and paid £8,499 so £2,755 of the bounce back loan was used to top up HMRC’s furlough payments. 5) On 24 June 2020 OLB was placed into a creditors voluntary liquidation at which time the balance of its bank accounts totalled £12,303.