By Lucy Caulkett
The Director of a Cambridge telecoms company has been banned for 6 years after his company permitted its lines to be used to make millions of nuisance marketing calls.
Gregory Francis Rudd , 53, was the sole director of Keurboom Communications Limited , registered in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, has been placed in voluntary liquidation and the ICO intends to was incorporated in May 2014 and supplied wholesale, self-managed telecom solutions to the call centre market.
Between April 2015 and June 2016, however, the ICO received over 1,000 complaints from members of the public about nuisance calls. Further enquiries by the ICO found that, between October 2014 and March 2016, up to 99.5 million automated marketing calls were made, through Keurboom’s lines, to people who had not provided their consent.
The calls, made over an 18-month period between October 2014 and March 2016, related to a wide range of subjects including road traffic accident claims and PPI compensation. Some people received repeat calls, sometimes on the same day and during unsociable hours.
This is a breach of Privacy and Electronic Communications regulations, which state that automated calls can only be made to persons who give prior consent to such a call from that specific caller.
After receiving 1,036 complaints, the ICO decided to act. Short of the telecoms company providing information proving that people had consented to receive the calls, and in 2017, its guilt was proven and the ICO issued Keurboom a then-record £400,000 fine.
Following the ICO’s Notice of Intention to issue the above penalty, Keurboom entered Creditors Voluntary Liquidation in March 2017, and the ICO referred Gregory Rudd’s conduct as director to the Insolvency Service. The Secretary of State accepted a disqualification undertaking from Gregory Rudd after he did not dispute that he failed to ensure Keurboom Communications complied with its responsibilities under PECR regulations.
PROHIBITION
He is now barred from any involvement in the formation, promotion or management of a company, directly or indirectly, for 6 years, without the permission of the court.
Mark Bruce, Chief Investigator for the Insolvency Service, said:
“This ban is a warning to other directors, who contribute to the scourge that is nuisance calls, that there are severe repercussions for such behaviour.
I would like to thank my colleagues at the Information Commissioners Office for their hard work and co-operation in achieving this outcome.”
This ban follows two other recent disqualifications secured for breaches of Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations as a result of collaboration between the Insolvency Service and ICO.
Image: Joe Giddens/PA