An Instagram influencer has been banned from being a director over claims a government Covid loan was misused. Yvonne McCuaig put her call centre firm into liquidation after it was given a huge fine for hassling householders with half a million unwanted phone calls.
But now an investigation has revealed questions over the use of a £30,000 Covid loan and why she transferred £180,000 to herself before her company was shut down. The Sunday Mail previously unmasked McCuaig, 43, a cold-calling queen, when her firm, Dial a Deal Scotland Ltd, was fined £150,000 by Information Commissioners’ Office.
The company plagued people with nuisance calls and set up a series of fake trading names to try to sell government green schemes which were found to be non-existent. It also used questionable tactics such as spoof numbers so they couldn’t be traced back to their HQ in an industrial estate in the east end of Glasgow.
McCuaig, from Helensburgh, who portrayed herself as a fashion influencer on social media and made no mention of her call centre, was asked to explain where the money went.
Company watchdog the Insolvency Service has banned her and her IT expert co-director Calum Kirkpatrick, 38, from being directors of any firm for seven years.
The investigation concluded that McCuaig “failed to ensure Dial a Deal Scotland Limited (DSL) maintained or preserved adequate accounting records ... with the consequence that it has not been possible to determine DSL’s income and expenditure.”
It said this meant it could not check if a Covid Bounce Back Loan was “used for the economic benefit” of the company and if “DSL was eligible” for the loan of £30,000 in August 2020.
The Insolvency Service probe also questioned “why payments totalling £180,400 were made to her” from August 20, 2020, to September 7, 2021, before it went into liquidation. The investigation found similar failings on the part of Kirkpatrick, from Falkirk.
A source said: “It’s a condition of receiving a Covid loan that you can show how the money was used but the Dial a Deal accounts couldn’t do that.McCuaig has big questions to answer about what the money was used for.”
McCuaig and Kirkpatrick were unable to be reached for comment.
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