Insolvency practitioner handed hefty fine after serious breaches

The Regulation and Conduct Committee has severely reprimanded and fined an insolvency practitioner after several breaches of practice.

Kieran Bourne of Coventry-based Cromwell Insolvency has been fined £24k and ordered to pay costs of more than £13k for breaching Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing regulations, as well as Insolvency Practice rules.

Allegations include not properly verifying employees’ claims before submitting documents to the Redundancy Payments Service, failing to keep records of meetings with directors and shareholders when IDs were produced and verified and neglecting to conduct due diligence and verify the identity of who was paying his fees.

For the first set of allegations, a severe reprimand and £10k was given due to the repeated course of conduct across seven cases of redundancy payments and the potential loss of public funds.

Another severe reprimand and a £6k fine was handed to Bourne for his repetitive failings in keeping contemporaneous records.

Bourne’s third allegation meant he was severely reprimanded and fined £8k for failing to conduct proper Customer Due Diligence on the verification of who was paying his fees, as per Anti-Money Laundering (AML) guidelines.