Bounce Back Loans: It’s payback time

"Reports of BBL fraud are on the rise, and The Insolvency Service is being quick to name and shame those in its director disqualifications database."

This is the elephant in the room in my opinion. They need a bigger stick. Or something like the London Gazette, but more targeted - like posters up in your local Tesco with your picture and a note of how much you stole and what you spent it on, or it is automatically added to all your social media accounts.

For most people (myself included), who cares if your on that database? Most haven't heard of it and it probably doesn't effect your life in any meaningful way.

People who end up on the list will probably have no issues using work arounds to get around whatever limitations it is meant to put in place.

Yes; it's been stated here many times that fraudsters don't give a monkey's about having their wrist slapped by the Insolvency Service and who can blame them (in fact, they probably can't believe their luck that that's the worst that can happen)?

As for this:

“They seem quite astounded when we tell them they will have to repay that personally – naively they assume it will be covered by the government guarantee.”

Who's being naïve here? There are not enough insolvency staff to do that for all the 1,000s of fraudulent & dodgy BBLs and the paltry £25m is certainly nowhere near enough to resource this properly.

....cars, watches, jewellery: pah!

I bought a narrowboat with mine!

(only kidding - it was a speedboat - I bought the narrowboat from furlough funds)

You could increase that budget tenfold and they will still make a massive hash of it.

Wow disqualification the directors are literally laughing all the way to the bank. Its just joke punishment. A few of these fraudsters are abroad anyway.

Who says crime doesn't pay !!

No one cares as its not their money neither the banks and government. Its the greatest cash giveaway ever.

Bonaza for insolvency practitioners too as these sole director companies who just started at the time of the BBL will be flush with cash. Life is indeed unfair

You only need to find 500 cases of fraudulent BBLs to cover the costs of £25m, so why doesn't Rishi put this out to tender for accountants and we keep 50% of any funds recovered. Sure as heck they take no notice of any SARs reports we give them, easy money to recover and they do nothing except write more legislation promising longer prison sentences for accountants failing to report.

There should be a reciprocal law for civil servants failing to act on submitted SARs reports, maybe 10 years inside and forfeiture of their pension would encourage the poor souls.

What a waste of £25m.

Suspect if the government hadn't provided all this "support" there was a severe risk of a total collapse of the economy and that would have cost us substantially more than any BBL defaults.

That we're still here and pretty much back to normal probably suggests they got it right regardless of the cost.

Whole thing is a complete farce.

The BBL scheme was a knee jerk panicked reaction bought in during a crisis. Ill thought out, oblivious to the consequences.

Was any "Covid support" really intended to support the economy or its recipients, was any of it actually needed in the first place, if you consider that even the John Hopkins conducted a meta analysis which showed that ALL the "lockdown measures" (a term used in prisons) only perhaps accounted for a change in outcomes of a mere 1% I would say a resounding no.

Look at the ONS which proves beyond doubt that Patrick Swayne was correct when he was lambasted by Gove, Rayner, and that laughable CCDH (if the conseqeunces of its activities were not so serious) for suggesting that data waas being manipulated https://www.times-series.co.uk/news/national/19045275.swayne-told-apolog..., the typical comparator for mortalities were are given isa five yrar rolling average which (for the all cause age adjusted mortalities per capita) DOES show an uptick of some 12.5% of 2020 0ver 2019, what that truth conceals is that the same figure for 2020 is actually LOWER than all nineteen consecutive years from 1990 to 2009, look at the longterm statistics per nation globally, quite simply there was no "pandemic" other than one of manufactured "cases"which were not ill people but merely the results of the highly innapropriate use of a laboratory research tool (PCR) deployed for clinical diagnostics. What we have NOW is a pandemic of the most gross consequential, I hestitate to use the bellittling term of "collateral", range of damages possible from retarded child development and massive child and adoloscent psychological damage running all the way through to supply chains that have possibly been near irrevocably damaged before grave effects are endured, inthe context, BBL fraud is a drop in the ocean.

One must ask as to whether people in government are really that thick or are they just mendacious?

A better way to do this would be for Accountants to make a type of "BBL report" through the SARs reports for companies they suspect / suspected of claiming fraudulently.

It would point this "crack team" in the right direction, we all know this team will be fully of overpaid civil servants that don't know their [***] from their elbow and some MP / Lord will be getting a kickback.

Utter Drivel! This is all about passing the buck. Shortly before these schemes were announced the Government announced they were considering 'helicopter money' to keep the economy afloat. This readers may remember was all over the news. This was ultimately delivered in the form of Bounce Back Loans and Furlough scheme - AKA a method of distributing money into the economy to keep things moving.

Now that the economic chickens are coming home to roost, the Government is changing tack and looking for somewhere to place the blame for its failures. The furlough and BBL money is not tucked under peoples beds, it has all been spent - by keeping staff employed and putting food in the cupboards during the rediculous lockdown policy.

The money was handed out with a 'we don't care, nobody cares' policy. It is irrelevant now that a portion of it was distributed to fraudsters, many of whom were ordinary business people before covid, who were easily able to bend the truth to fit the criteria for the funding out of desparation to keep their businesses afloat. It is irrelevant because the distribution of these funds achieved the Governments stated objectives. It bought cars, paid mortgage payments, and was circulated into the economy at some point or other and continues to circulate - this is why we headed into the high inflation zone.

The Government having achieved what it set out to, has preserved it's own income from tax revenue - collecting a large part of the funds back in the form of VAT and duties each time this additional circulating supply of money is spent. This has kept the countries GDP etc over the Brexit period looking far better than it actually was/is. The problem the Government are facing is that this 'ruse' is unsustainable.

Oh I am quite sure they intended to be able to keep it up until after the next general election, with billions in lending on one side of the balance sheet apparently negating the borrowing on the other. The real problem is, if the BBLs and recovery loans default, this sham no longer holds up. It is for this reason the plan has now changed - justify the problem by blaming it on fraudsters, but also by bullying as many borrowers as possible to keep up the repayments with fear borne out of the threat of being accused by fraud and continue trading where they would otherwise have closed their businesses down for being insolvent.

There are loads of companies that got the £50K BBL that are now seeking / hoping to be struck off the Companies House Register. There are also business with perfectly healthy balance sheets before - and after - Covid who have trousered the £50K almost as an insurance policy. These include 2 accountancy practices where - as a practitioner myself - I've never been busier as during the lockdown period.

I had the feeling at the time that people would apply for the BBLs and somehow get away without paying it back, i.e. get the money, spend it, get an employed role then seek to bin off the personal service company. I heard of one chap even invest a chunk of his £50K in crypto-currency, others have paid off punitive credit card debt with BBL money. Yes, there were those who needed it to keep afloat and yes it has helped them, but it has also brought out the worst in others.

The number of companies that were incorporated for the sole purpose of receiving bounce back loans beggars belief! Who were the clever people that decided this was a good idea???……