Eezee Euro under investigation
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/ A liquidator's investigation has begun into the affairs of freight forwarder Eezee Euro Services after a creditors' meeting heard that the company owes more than £420,000 to at least 450 creditors — most of them small hauliers.
Last week CM predicted that the company's debts would top £300,000 — instead shocked hauliers at the meeting in Manchester on Monday (28 October), learnt that the company owes thousands more and its monthly bank statement has only been in the black once in the year from November 1990 to October 1991. Eezee Euro folded on 14 October.
Now liquidator James Gleave of Arthur Andersen intends to send a detailed questionnaire to all the hauliers owed money — in one case as much as £18,000. Information collected may be passed on to the Department of Trade and Industry which has the power to decide if a company has been wrongfully trading.
A company could be deemed to have been wrongfully trading if it continued to issue contracts when insolvent. Directors can be disqualified and made personally liable for the firm's debts. This extends to employees acting as directors, without being listed as such.
Gleave was appointed liquidator by the meeting and a creditors' committee has been formed to investigate the background to the company's collapse.
Hauliers at the meeting told CM that Gleave presented them with a report headed Reedwad Limited in Liquidation T/A Eezee Euro Services and T/A Ram Distribution.
The liquidator's report lists David Allbright as the sole director of Reedwad, Eezee Euro and Ram Distribution and names the
only other shareholder as Susan McGarity — Allbright is also named as company secretary. He admitted to creditors that he has been associated with three other failed companies, trading as the Abbey Portland Group.
Gleave's investigation will be concerned with discovering whether Eezee Euro traded while insolvent. If there is evidence of any criminal activity it will be passed on to the police.
Hauliers at the meeting told CM they had wanted to know why former Eezee Euro executive Bernard O'Brien was not present to answer questions concerning his status within the company. According to Allbright, O'Brien, who resigned shortly before Eezee Euro collapsed, acted as a consultant for the operation.
However, former director Roy Vernon, who left Eezee Euro in August, may be called on to provide the liquidator with information about the company's past operation — particularly its periods of expansion after taking over nine depots from Transworld Distribution — which crashed owing Elm to 1,000 creditors in May.
Transworld is among a list of 13 creditors owed more than £5,000 by Eezee Euro — it is owed £.13,932, a debt now many
months old. A total of 444 creditors have claims of less than £5,000.
Former director Allbright says he is now unemployed and has no immediate plans of working again. But a representative of Touche Ross at the meeting told Allbright he had shown no remorse for the plight of the creditors.