Is an ostrich in Belgium worth two in the bush? Asset tracing in international insolvency
✍ Scribed by Michael Steiner
- Book ID
- 101285307
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 99 KB
- Volume
- 8
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1180-0518
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
a petition to wind up The Ostrich Farming Corporation Limited (TOFCL) in the Chancery Division in the High Court of Justice in England, on the grounds that the company should be wound up in the public interest. 2 The Ocial Receiver was appointed provisional liquidator on the 3 April 1996. 3 The court made a compulsory winding up order on the 19 June 1996 and on the 25 July 1996 Adrian Stanway and Patrick Boyden of PricewaterhouseCoopers (then Coopers & Lybrand) were appointed joint liquidators.
This article discusses the problems faced by the Ocial Receiver and subsequently the joint liquidators in tracing the assets of TOFCL. The case is a good example of a common scenario facing insolvency practitioners worldwide. Some kind of a fraud has been perpetrated on the company in liquidation and its creditors but the assets have been remitted or laundered through a number of dierent jurisdictions where the remedies available to insolvency oceholders may be very dierent to those available in the jurisdiction in which the company traded. The problem is not necessarily so much one of recognition of the oce-holder, but of the availability of investigatory regimes to that oceholder in dierent countries. 4
1. Head of the Corporate and Reconstruction
Insolvency Group, Denton Hall, England, solicitors for the liquidators of The Ostrich Farming Corporation Limited. 2. Section 127 of the Insolvency Act 1986 allows a company to be wound up on the grounds that it is just and equitable. 3. The Ocial Receiver is an ocial of the Insolvency Service which is an independent organisation although it forms part of the Department of Trade and Industry. It is customary when a provisional liquidator is appointed for the Ocial Receiver to be appointed provisional liquidator, pending the determination of whether the petition is justi®ed or not. 4. See the comparative study of investigatory powers