£264 company 'owes £24m' in VAT

MOBILE phone company Worldsoft is being pursued by Customs & Excise for £23.9m in unpaid VAT. The huge sum was run up in only ten weeks of trading. That means the unquoted Worldsoft, which has assets of only £264, would have had to book more than £135m of purchases in those 50 days - enough to rank it among Britain's biggest companies.

Customs believes that Worldsoft, a private company based in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and run by directors Stephen Hancock and Barbara Moran, notched up the VAT liability as a result of the 'purported purchases' of phones from two other unlisted firms.

Worldsoft, which has an ex-directory phone number and whose directors are also not listed in the phone book, is believed to be trying to make a profit from buying and selling mobile phones. It is not clear how the company has financed such huge purchases of phones. Nor is it known whether Worldsoft sells the phones to the public or to other companies.

The first batch was allegedly bought from ExtraLAN, based in Basingstoke, Hampshire. Worldsoft is said to have traded with ExtraLAN between 25 September and 15 October last year, incurring a VAT liability of £5.5m,

But between 4 February and 21 March this year, Worldsoft placed a further order for phones from Gyraland, according to legal proceedings filed by Customs last month. Gyraland, based in Bristol, was incorporated as a company only last September. It has never filed a set of accounts and one of its directors and the company secretary resigned in February. Companies House is looking at a proposal to strike it from its register.

The order, placed over just 35 working days, has landed Worldsoft with a VAT bill of £18.4m, which Customs claims should have paid by the end of April. As well as suing Worldsoft for the total of £23.9m, Customs is seeking interest on the late payment of more than £6,000 a day.

The directors of Worldsoft, which has yet to file its accounts for the period in question, could not be reached for comment.