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Judge freezes tycoon's assets
Neal Snowdon30/12/2005
THE founder of The Accident Group has been set a weekly spending limit by a judge.
Mark Langford has also had his assets frozen as liquidators try to trace his collapsed company's missing millions.
Since the Manchester-based no-win no-fee company - commonly known as TAG - crashed in May 2003, Mr Langford and his wife Debbie have spent much of the time living in their luxurious Marbella mansion and on his £1.5m yacht moored nearby.
But a court has now granted TAG's liquidators an injunction freezing those assets and setting the Langfords a weekly spending limit while the hunt goes on for the company's millions.
At a four-hour hearing at the High Court in Leeds, lawyers acting for the couple - Mrs Langford was also a director of the company - opposed the liquidators' application. But the judge froze the Langfords' assets.
The ruling does not affect the couple's mansion in North Rode, near Congleton. But this may be the subject of another court hearing.
Mr and Mrs Langford are coming under increasing pressure to explain how the company collapsed owing an estimated £100m just months after they took millions in dividends out of the company.
Many of the 2,700 staff were sacked by text message.
Freezing the Langfords’ assets is an attempt by the liquidators to prevent any of them being disposed of while investigations continue into how the Langfords obtained money from TAG and how that cash was then used.
It is the latest in a series of blows to Mr and Mrs Langford, who have been reluctant to disclose some details to investigators and have failed to attend all court hearings so far. In the past two months, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has issued proceedings against Mr and Mrs Langford to have them disqualified as directors.
Breach
Mrs Langford has also been ordered by the High Court in Manchester to pay £384,005 back to TAG’s liquidators.
The court accepted the liquidators’ argument that she had taken money or assets from the company improperly, as she had done nothing to earn her salary, and had breached her duty as a director.
Liquidators have intensified their investigations into the way cash was paid out of TAG into an offshore Employee Benefits Trust (EBT), controlled from Jersey. It is the liquidators’ job to recoup as much money as possible from TAG to help repay its debts to creditors.
The M.E.N. was unable to contact the liquidators at the time of going to press.
Following TAG’s collapse, six of its directors have given undertakings to the DTI that they will not become company directors again for a number of years.
Another director, Mike Watson, is due to attend court next March to contest DTI attempts to disqualify him as a director.
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