Dr. David McFadden:

It has been interesting dealing with these queries in recent months. We have noticed an uptick in activities that have been a cause for concern and we have reacted by putting together an integrity checking group within the office. That has involved bringing together staff from across the office who are involved in different aspects of the work the CRO does. This includes staff who are experienced in company incorporation, the issuing of certificates and the checking of when a company has been set up, together with staff who are involved in enforcement of various aspects of filing for companies, with me as legal adviser. A group has been put together and we are daily carrying out checks on aspects of what we have seen occur. As mentioned, there has been a noticeable uptick. It might not have been as big an uptick as might have been seen at first but a problem has been noticed.

We looked at some of the cases that were highlighted. Having delved into those cases, we spotted certain markers which pointed us towards certain types of activity that could be ongoing. I will be careful about the information I give on what we are doing but the markers we have spotted indicated certain types of activity. We used that information, moved out from that and we noticed problems in a number of areas. For example, there had been an attempt to set up a number of companies which we put on hold before those companies got incorporated. Using the information we had garnered we were able to check, for example, that certain information that had been presented to us may not have been accurate and correct. For example, the directors needed to be resident and we discovered those points the Deputy mentioned about the addresses being provided.

Unfortunately we also discovered that a number of companies had already been formed where certain questionable issues had arisen. For example, once a company has been incorporated and a certificate of incorporation has been issued, that is conclusive evidence in law and it cannot be challenged that all that should have been done was done and that company is now a separate legal person. Once that company is set up, if we now discover issues after the event, such as people’s identities being used as directors when they did not give consent, we have taken steps proactively to address those problems. We have contacted the individuals concerned and received evidence from them confirming that they did not give their prior consent to act as directors for these companies. In those circumstances we have been able to remove those directors from the companies in question. That has meant that in certain circumstances these companies have no longer had the required one director resident within the European Economic Area and that has allowed us to take the next step of striking them off and removing them from the register. We have also referred files to the Director of Corporate Enforcement.

The evidence we are seeing is evidence of serious crimes. The registrar has some enforcement function in a limited number of areas, including District Court prosecutions for filing type offences. There are also serious offences which involve, for example, giving misinformation to the registrar, which amounts to impersonation and using people’s identities. These are serious offences that are indictable under the Act and they are enforceable by the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, and the ODCE, or both. The ODCE has a Garda unit and it is appropriate that we send those files to it. In his opening remarks Mr. Newman mentioned that we had sent eight separate pieces of correspondence to the ODCE and there is more in the pipeline. We have been taking proactive steps to address the problems that have been raised. It is possible that there may have been issues in the past but we are certain that there has recently been a slight uptick in this. We have reacted quickly and put together a team that is working on this on a daily basis.