Woman arrested as part of Corporate Enforcement Authority investigation

A woman has been arrested by officers from the Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA) as part of an ongoing investigation into the collapse of a company in the west of the country and related alleged theft and fraud offences.

It is alleged a company of significant scale effectively collapsed and that the assets were misappropriated. At the same time, two other firms began operating nearby conducting very similar trade.

The woman was detained on Monday morning in Co Roscommon and was being held under Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act, which allows for suspects to be questioned without charge for up to seven days.

In a brief statement the CEA, which investigates breaches of company law, said the woman had been arrested as part of “an ongoing investigation into company law and other theft and fraud-related offences”.

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The Irish Times understands the woman arrested is the third suspect to be detained as part of the same inquiry. Earlier this month two other suspects, both men, were also arrested for questioning, though news of that part of the inquiry has not emerged publicly until now.

At the centre of the investigation now underway is an allegation that assets from a initial company, now not longer operating, valued at almost €1 million, are unaccounted for. This was despite the fact their value could have been realised to settle some of the debts left in the wake of the collapse of the company.

Around the same time as the collapse the company - which sold high value items and also provided related services - two other new firms from the same region began operating in the same sector.

It is alleged the assets from the collapsed company were effectively channeled into the new entities. If proven, that allegation would amount to the creditors of the original company having been defrauded of significant sums owed to them.

While the people involved in the running of the two new companies are not the same people who ran the collapsed company, all parties are well known to each other. The long-running dispute has its origins in a legal action over a decade ago, which resulted in the original company, which has since been wound up, incurring a significant debt after it was sued by a customer who claimed machinery sold to it was faulty.