Corporate Enforcement Authority Publishes Annual  Report 2024

The Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA) has today published its second Annual Report. The Report details the CEA’s activities during 2024 in furthering its strategic objectives as set out in its statement of strategy 2022-2025.

Overview of activity

The Report features 22 case studies that highlight the wide-ranging impact of the CEA. Those case studies evidence a careful and tiered approach towards the utilisation of the CEA’s suite of enforcement powers. By adopting this approach, the CEA:

• supports stakeholders, including company members, shareholders, and creditors, in upholding their rights under company law,

• upholds the integrity of company law’s procedural, governance, and transparency standards by ensuring adherence and addressing identified instances of non-compliance,

• protects the public through the operation of a statutory regime under which directors of insolvent companies who have failed to meet the requisite standards of behaviour are restricted or disqualified, and

• investigates potential violations of company law and takes appropriate civil and/or criminal enforcement action.

The foregoing complements the CEA’s advocacy activities, which include the publication of information and guidance material and a programme of outreach activity which seeks to engage with key stakeholders including company directors, business representative groups, professional bodies, and business and law students.

During 2024, the CEA:

• received over 270 complaints from members of the public, as well as almost 200 statutory reports from auditors, examiners, and process advisors, 

• received and examined over 980 statutory reports from liquidators in respect of insolvent companies and the behaviour of the directors of such companies,

• secured 98 restrictions and 22 disqualifications of company directors,

• secured 52 court orders, took 145 witness statements, and CEA officers effected 7 arrests in the course of investigative/enforcement activity,

• submitted 4 investigation files to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and

• secured criminal convictions in respect of the company law offences of furnishing false information to the Registrar of Companies, failing to take all reasonable steps to secure a company’s compliance with its accounting obligations, and acting as a company director while disqualified from doing so. Criminal convictions were also secured in respect of the offences of deception and theft.

CORPORATE ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY

3 July 2025

ENDS/

Read full Annual Report here

English

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