A fourth company director has been disqualified for their role in a scheme involving unauthorised banking transactions worth almost £14 million.
Daryl Dylan from Dublin allowed unarranged overdrafts with Barclays Bank to be used to make transfers of more than £1.6 million from the accounts of Oldcocdt and Oldcostl in 2021.
Most of the transfers were to connected companies controlled by his half-brother, Scott Dylan, and associates. Daryl Dylan failed to ensure the funds could be repaid to Barclays on demand, breaching the bank’s terms and conditions.
Daryl Dylan allowed unarranged overdrafts on the Oldcocdt accounts to be used to make net payments of £1,042,220, most of which were transfers to connected companies. A further £586,454 in net payments were made from unarranged overdrafts on the Oldcostl account to a connected company.
Barclays secured freezing orders for the accounts in September 2021 and demanded repayment of £1,056,970 from Oldcocdt and £600,114 from Oldcostl. No repayments were made and the two companies entered liquidation in January 2022.
Dylan joins his half-brother Scott, David Antrobus and Jack Mason in being disqualified as company directors for their role in the scheme. He has been banned from being a company director for seven and a half years.
The judge described Scott Dylan as the “driving force in this scheme which can really be regarded as a scam” and banned him for 13 years. He added that the scheme had “no legitimate purpose”.
Scott Dylan, Antrobus and Mason were each sentenced to 22 months in prison in October 2024 for contempt of court after breaching freezing orders connected to the Barclays proceedings. Both Mason and Antrobus have civil warrants outstanding and have not served their sentences.
Victoria Edgar, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: "Acting as a company director comes with responsibilities which must be taken seriously.
"Daryl Dylan failed to exercise the standard of care, skill and diligence reasonably expected of a director responsible for the affairs of a company.
"We have now secured director disqualifications worth a combined 38 years against both Dylans, Antrobus and Mason, proving that civil sanctions are an effective tool against those who have so clearly demonstrated they are unfit to direct companies."
Ben Hay, legal director and fraud specialist at law firm VWV, commented: "The directors disqualification scheme can be a strong deterrent but it doesn't always worry the most unscrupulous. It will be interesting to see if s250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 will be the catalyst for tighter fraud prevention measures and a reduction in fraud of this type. Businesses will have to tighten up their fraud prevention measures to reduce the opportunity for senior staff to commit fraud or other offences which, under s250, could then make the organisation liable too."
