Reclaiming money from Bona Vacantia

Electric_Peach

I used to work as a self employed IT consultant. I was the director of a Ltd company and the sole employee.

Any payments from my clients were made directly to my Ltd company's business bank account with Santander.

I eventually wound the company up, and, after all taxes / fees etc were paid, I had £223.55 remaining in the business account. In my opinion, this was the last of the money owed to me personally that I had earned as part of my consultancy work and was happy to leave it there until I decided what to do with it.

Shortly after, I was involved in a serious road traffic collision and hospitalised. It was some months before I was back in a position to deal with my personal affairs, and as I was now out of work, required to make use of this £223.55.

When I went to Santander to withdraw my money I was told the account had been closed. I had received no prior warning from Santander that this was going to happen, nor did I make any authorisation. Santander further informed me that the money had been allocated to the Bona Vacantia (BV) agency.

I wrote to BV asking to have my money returned to me and cited the extenuating circumstances, should they be necessary, as to why I had been unable to withdraw the money before the Santander account had been automatically closed. I received the following (condensed):

'When a company is dissolved it's assets pass to the crown and the treasury solicitor deals with these assets on behalf of the crown.

If BV were to refund this money we would charge £250 minimum costs, which is more than the money being refunded'.

Unless you can prove that this money is 'yours' the charges will not be waived'.

Frankly, I have no idea how to prove it is 'mine' apart from saying 'it was in MY companies bank account, of course it is mine. I assume I need to prove it is owed to me in wages or similar, but I cannot envisage how this is done.

To summarise, I feel that Santander closed my business account without my authorisation, that Santander 'gave away' my money to BV without any warning, and the money has been claimed by a crown treasury agency who will charge me more than my assets are worth, to return them, even though I can prove none of this should have been allowed to happen.

To say I am unhappy with both parties is an understatement but having written to both, and received unsatisfactory responses, I am unsure as to my options.

If anyone can provide advice as to how to reclaim this money I would be very happy.

Many thanks

Peter

(Mods: I am not sure which is the correct area of the forum for this request. I have posted it in here and also in Budgeting and Bank Accounts. Thanks)