A Criminal Matter?

cinnamon

We are a management company for a small residential development for the over 55s.  Directors and company secretary living in situ.  We recently dismissed the company secretary and, in order to continue with the adminstration, requested all management material, passwords for on-line banking etc.  The CS has refused to comply.  As his address is that registered at Companies House as the company contact, any change codes would go to him.  He is moving away in three days time.  He will not respond to emails, solicitor's letter or direct approach.  Suggestions please.

Sandtree

cinnamon said:

We are a management company for a small residential development for the over 55s.  Directors and company secretary living in situ.  We recently dismissed the company secretary and, in order to continue with the adminstration, requested all management material, passwords for on-line banking etc.  The CS has refused to comply.  As his address is that registered at Companies House as the company contact, any change codes would go to him.  He is moving away in three days time.  He will not respond to emails, solicitor's letter or direct approach.  Suggestions please.

First of all, you are not a company.

A company is a legal entity in its own right whereas you are most likely human. As a natural person you can have various roles and relationships with a company - shareholder, statutory director, employee, customer etc. What are your roles with the company?

A company secretary is simply an employee of a company with certain statutory duties (once the company gets to a certain size). It clearly makes sense to get materials off of an employee before firing them... or even more sensible that information is stored in an appropriate company location before the relationship with the employee even sours. 

Your bank will be able to change the signatories and online access etc following an appropriate request from a statutory director... each bank will have its own processes/forms to enable this.

What criminal offence do you think the former employee has committed? Highlighting poor company governance and judgement is not a criminal matter.

JJ_Egan

This is not a consumer rights issue if its a company .

cinnamon

I am one of the three directors.  I use the term "we" to refer to all three.  The CS refuses to communicate, hence our problem.    I agree that he should not have registered his home address as the business address.  However, as it is all on -ite, one of our properties had to be used.  Our question is that, should he disappear with the company's correspondence, would this be classed as theft?

With regard to choice of forum;  this was the closest to the question I could find.  

user1977

Even if it is a crime, all that means is that you can report it to the police and then twiddle your thumbs while you wait for them to decide whether it's in the public interest for them to spend time and money investigating it. The police don't provide a free stolen items recovery service. The company would be better pursuing the ex-secretary via the civil courts to retrieve the property.

cinnamon

At last, a constructive response.  Thak you user1977.

MattMattMattUK

You could in theory take court action to make him hand over company property if he keeps any of it, it would be costly and expensive, I am not sure on what grounds you could pursue him to disclose passwords though. 

As others mentioned above, change the address with Companies House, HMRC and the bank directly, they all have procedures for these kinds of incidents. 

Sandtree

cinnamon said:

I am one of the three directors.  I use the term "we" to refer to all three.  The CS refuses to communicate, hence our problem.    I agree that he should not have registered his home address as the business address.  However, as it is all on -ite, one of our properties had to be used.  Our question is that, should he disappear with the company's correspondence, would this be classed as theft?

With regard to choice of forum;  this was the closest to the question I could find.  

cinnamon said:

At last, a constructive response.  

At last a meaningful explanation of the situation.

What "correspondence" do you want back? Where are your digital records etc?

As already said, statutory directors can approach the bank to get new people approved for online log in etc. Similarly with HMRC you can go through the recover access process which includes if you cannot get access to the email address used.  With both most correspondence will be available online once access is restored. Suppliers/customers etc you are likely to have to bite the bullet and go to them individually and ask for copies. 

If you were to call the police and could actually get them interested enough the probability is that the former employee will just say it was bits of paper, there was no intrinsic value, he had no need for them anymore so they just went in the shredder and emails were deleted.

Manxman_in_exile

cinnamon said:

At last, a constructive response.  Thak you user1977.

I'll give you an even more constructive response.  What does the company's solicitor advise the directors to do?

born_again

Manxman_in_exile said:

cinnamon said:

At last, a constructive response.  Thak you user1977.

I'll give you an even more constructive response.  What does the company's solicitor advise the directors to do?

Add in make sure that more than 1 person has access to anything important, such as banks accounts etc.

bris

It's not a criminal matter, companies house should have been notified immediately. If you don't know how to deal with this then get a solicitor who does company law to do it for you..