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One hand in the cookie jar: Fraud and directors’ duties in insolvency
Luke Gregory
Daniel is an Associate in the Dispute Resolution team advising on a broad range of complex and high value commercial litigation matters with a focus on civil fraud, contentious insolvency and asset recovery matters. He is particularly interested in the crossover between insolvency and civil fraud and utilising the powers in each jurisdiction to maximise recoveries for clients.
Daniel’s recent experience includes:
- Acting for insolvency practitioners in obtaining multiple urgent out of court administration appointments including advising on their powers and post appointment issues including ROT claims, purported exercise of liens, cross border elements, furloughing/redundancy of staff and termination of leases;
- Advising Joint Administrators on the validity of their appointment in circumstances where the appointing directors failed to give notice to a qualifying floating charge holder pursuant to para 26 of Schedule B1.
- Advising office holders and directors on their powers and obligations under section 234 (delivery up of property), section 235 (duty to co-operate) and section 236 (provision of documents and information) of the Insolvency Act 1986;
- Advising creditors in proving their claims in both administrations and liquidations including successfully challenging the joint liquidators’ failure to adjudicate in a timely fashion and negotiating payment in full plus interest;
- Advising office holders, creditors and shareholders on their rights and powers to bring claims against delinquent directors including antecedent transactions (particularly, risk of wrongful trading and fraudulent trading claims);
- Acting for multiple victims of authorised push payment (APP) frauds including, for a large accountancy victim on internal employee fraud and for an international shipping corporation victim of an external hacking attack. Successfully obtained urgent Norwich Pharmacal/Bankers Trust relief against the recipient banks of the stolen monies in each case to aid asset tracing and investigations.
- Acting in on-going litigation defending inter alia proprietary claims to recover and trace into a multi-million London property owned by our client; the purchase funds for which the claimants allege are derived from their multi-million pound investment into fraudulent film finance schemes conceived and operated by her husband;
- Acting for an African government to recover assets stolen from a former head of state;
- Acting for a Formula 1 agent at a successful trial for recovery of unpaid commission due from the introduction of a major title sponsor to a Formula 1 racing team.
Professional societies and memberships
- Young Fraud Lawyers Association (YFLA)
- Junior LSLA
- Thought Leaders 4 FIRE (Fraud Insolvency Recovery and Enforcement)
A meticulous approach in analysing the evidence, and a willingness to listen"
A creditor client
Daniel provides concise advice. He delivered exactly what I asked for, very balanced advice and in a format and manner that I could understand"
A creditor client
Daniel Staunton has added real weight to the team. He is adept at ensuring that all the dots are joined and that nothing gets missed, even in the hardest fought cases.
The Legal 500 UK, 2021