Women banned from running companies

A businesswoman paid her daughter nearly £200,000 of company cash after their firm went bust.

- SALLY HIND

Hazel Lamont, 74, and her daughter Nicola Murray, 54, were directors of Glasgow-based Scotparts UK Ltd, a machinery parts firm which ceased trading with debts of £900,000.

A customer had paid more than £300,000 into the firm's bank account just days before it was decided to declare it insolvent.

Now Lamont and Murray, from Motherwell, have both been banned from running companies for nine years after an investigation by the Insolvency Service.

The Government agency said the pair had also transferred almost £150,000 to two connected companies in the days after deciding to cease trading.

Mike Smith, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: "Hazel Lamont and Nicola Murray knew, or at the very least, ought to have known that their company had significant liabilities to creditors.