Vintage International Ltd director banned for wine investment scam

Ofosuhene Ofori-Duah, the sole director of wine investment firm Vintage International Ltd (Vintage), has been banned from being a UK company director for 9 years.

An investigation by the Insolvency Service’s Company Investigations Team found that he caused ‘Vintage to trade with undue risk to its clients’.

Vintage went under in October 2012 owing £1,121,546, which included unfulfilled wine orders of £1,063,424. Its assets were just £21,789.

The company had been trading while insolvent since 30th June 2011, when it already had £293,056 in unfulfilled orders. Over half of these had been placed over six months previously.

Although insolvent, Vintage took further orders totalling £917,410 before going into liquidation. Only £148,917 worth of these new orders was fulfilled.

Vintage was formed in August 2008 and used an accommodation address at Canary Wharf. It addition to failing to buy wine, Vintage used cold calls, hard sales tactics and substantially overcharged clients for wines touted as a good investment.

Mark Bruce, a Chief Investigator at The Insolvency Service said: ‘The director in Vintage failed to ensure proper corporate governance was in place to clearly monitor client orders and the financial position of the company.

‘The Insolvency Service will always look to remove from the business community those directors who act below the standards that should be expected of them given the circumstances of their company’s trading.’

Written by Jim Budd