Trying to reclaim payment made to closed bank account

MarchApril

Hi there
I was the director of two small limited companies. One is still running, the other I closed down recently - it was fully dissolved in January this year.

I came to an informal arrangement with the business team at the bank about paying off the fairly small outstanding overdraft privately in several months' time. This is apparently quite a common thing to do. Although legally I am not personally liable for the company's debt, I did not want to leave the account this way and also hold other accounts with them.

The bank account was duly frozen at the time of, in fact, just after the dissolution and a letter was received confirming no further credits or debits would be made to or from the account.

However....a client of my existing company mistakenly has just paid a large bill by BACS into the account of the old company. This was despite clearly having the existing company details on the invoice. It only came to light when chasing them for it. It seems years ago they had set the old company up as a payee and knew we were linked so just paid it into that old company's account. The payment had been made a week before I discovered this so there was no chance of recalling it.

I called the bank and it is all highly unclear who is at fault or what can be done.

The bank have the same note on their files saying no further debits or credits could be made to the old company account, yet they accepted this payment. The payment was accepted into a bank account that doesn't exist any longer in its old form. I cannot even access it online and of course have destroyed the cards.

The client had an invoice issued from my existing company clearly stating the details of the existing company bank account, yet claim they are in the right because of what is 'on their system' and that in previous years they have paid into that account.

The payment can't simply form part of my personal repayment to the bank as it is for and linked to an invoice for the other company.

Does anyone have any idea of what I can do to get the payment either transferred to the new account or paid back to the client? And who is at fault?

Many thanks!

jonesMUFCforever

Has the old limited company been dissolved?

If so you have the bank bang to rights they have to refund you.

If not and the company owed the bank the money you will have to whistle for it.

So if the bank won't give it back to you then push it back to your client - they haven't paid you - pure and simple.

MarchApril

Yes, the company has been dissolved.

Thank you for your affirmation about the position the bank should be in.

But I suppose the worry is that there is a grey area in that I have made a private arrangement to personally repay the company's overdraft. This was to stop it going into administration which would have been totally unwieldy for a pretty small sum, though one I cannot instantly pay.

Do you think they need to refund it to the payer, my client? I would assume it couldn't be authorised to go straight to the another company account even though it is of course also run by me.

The other grey area worry is that the payer is going on about what is registered on their system instead of what is on the invoice and want me to accept that I should have been aware of that and requested a change of details via some form or other that I would have to email them to request..... These systems are smokescreens for big companies!

jonesMUFCforever

Have you asked the bank what they have done with the money??

Majestic12

The money now belongs to the Crown (I believe)