ODCE issues warning to Property management firms
Property management firms were warned today they face fines and convictions for failing to keep homeowners up to date with spending plans.
The country's corporate watchdog, which last year issued draft guidelines on the firms, said many people were being kept in the dark.
Issuing the 2006 annual report of the Office of the Director Corporate Enforcement, Paul Appleby said there was an absence or failure to give apartment owners information on how their money was being spent.
They are forced to pay out thousands of euro every year for firms to maintain flat complexes, communal areas and ensure bins are emptied.
But some management firms do not hold AGMs, have not published annual returns and have not given clients the chance to elect directors.
Mr Appleby said the ODCE wanted to see compliance rather than convictions for breaches of company law.
"Our approach has been to try more to rectify the problems," he said.
"What we have done is to direct the companies and the directors to have the AGMs that have not been held and to make the required information, namely the accounting information, available.
"On occasion if that has not sufficed we have then moved."
A number of management companies have been struck off and 75 more are facing this threat.
The draft guidelines on these firms were published last December and have been open for public consultation. Final rules should be detailed later this year.
The ODCE report also noted a string of successes the office had secured against unscrupulous directors and businesses.
And Mr Appleby said he supported moves for employees to be act as whisteblowers if directors were acting improperly.
Fourteen people were disqualified from running a company while two directors were restricted.
More than €160m by directors and people linked to them was repaid to their companies while 86 large cases involving €48m was referred to the Revenue Commissioners over possible tax liabilities.
In all 48 companies, directors and others were convicted for breaches of company law.
The ODCE was set up in October 2001 after corporate scandals in the late 1990s such as the Ansbacher and NIB controversies. These drew attention to the low level of policing of company law.
