Marketing executive banned by the Insolvency Service for six years after making 75,500 unsolicited marketing calls.
A former director of a marketing company has been banned from acting as a director or directly or indirectly becoming involved, in the promotion, formation or management of a company, without the permission of the court. For the next 6 years Elia Bols who now lives in Australia, is not to be involved in any such activity after AMS Marketing, of which he was a director, was found to be in violation of Regulation 21 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. The ICO reported that the 32 year old Australian native was banned by the Insolvency Service, as of November 2020.
After several complaints to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) and the ICO, Bols was informed that AMS Marketing would be hit with a fine.
Between October 2016 and October 2017, TPS received 71 complaints of unsolicited marketing by AMS, while the ICO received an additional 32 complaints. The company was subsequently issued a fine of over 100,000 Euros. AMS Marketing Limited allegedly did not use the TPS list before making those calls to remove the numbers of individuals who had elected not to receive unsolicited contact. The company ended up in court in April of 2019, while the fine remained unpaid.
The disqualification undertaking came after Bols did not dispute causing his company to breach Regulation 21 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
Elia Bols was made to face a disqualification undertaking on October 28th, 2020,when he did not dispute causing his company to breach Regulation 21 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
The regulation states; “A person shall neither use, nor instigate the use of, a public electronic communications service for the purposes of making unsolicited calls for direct marketing purposes where— (a)the called line is that of a subscriber who has previously notified the caller that such calls should not for the time being be made on that line; or (b)the number allocated to a subscriber in respect of the called line is one listed in the register kept under regulation 26.”
By failing to verify that the numbers being called were not included on the TPS list of individuals who had elected not to receive unsolicited contact, Bols and AMS Marketing breached this regulation. As a result, from 18 November 2020, Elia Bols is disqualified for 6 years from acting in business.
The ICO and Insolvency Service worked together to address this issue, when the company failed to pay the initial fine issued by the ICO.
The Insolvency Service, a Government agency addressing financial wrongdoing and maximising returns to creditors, worked with the ICO in dealing with this situation after AMS Marketing failed to pay the fine for their actions. Robert Clarke, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said “Elia Bols had a complete disregard of protective regulations and thanks to the joint work with the ICO, we have secured a ban which reflects the seriousness of this offence. When directors of a company do not comply with regulations that are designed to protect the public, we will fully investigate the circumstances and take action where appropriate.” The disqualification order issued to Elia Bols, subjects him to a range of restrictions detailed here.
