Truly awful situation, though thanks to xPeru for the indepth and high level of reporting.
It appears they will be no way for players to receive any meaningful sum of money back, I fear bankrolls will have to be written off. This makes my head assplode when I think of how awful us players have been treated by so many sites over the past 15 months.
In terms of:
Quote:
I'm still working on how big a stink we can kick up about this - I'm receptive to all ideas.
I'd imagine we can pursue either Fraudulent Trading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_trading
or Wrongful Trading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_trading
Looking at the meaning of Fraud:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud
Quote:
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual
The directors presumably still received salary and bonuses during the period which they would have known they were breaking the Malta/LGA rules.
They effectively deceived us by telling us our money was segrated, when instead it was being used to pay salaries.
Whilst this is clearly LGA's fault for not performing regular audits to check this, it is also presumably deceptive of the PL directors to continue to portray to players that they are segrating funds, when they know they are not.
If the Directors can be convicted of fraudulent trading then:
Quote:
a court order in relation to fraudulent trading it is the responsible parties (usually the directors) who must make up the loss and the third party beneficiaries will usually retain the benefit.
In terms of wrongful trading:
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The normal approach to wrongful trading actions is that the liquidator will try to establish a date at which the company can be shown to be balance sheet insolvent, and then show why it was unreasonable for directors to continue to trade after this.
In the UK, and contrary to many misconceptions, it is not an offence to trade a company while it is insolvent. Indeed in some situations, if the directors genuinely believe that the position will be turned around and the position of creditors will improve, it is the correct thing to do. When it becomes wrongful trading is when it should have been realised that the position of the creditors would likely deteriorate from that position onwards and the company would proceed into liquidation.
I think the PL Directors could claim they assumed the parent company would continue to invest further money, making a conviction under wrongful trading not possible. However, I don't think this would affect fraudulent trading - they deceived players by representing they had segregated the funds by showing the LGA logo when they knew full well they were not.
Just my thoughts!
john