Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many (a) investigations were carried out, (b) fines were issued and (c) prosecutions were made by the Companies Investigation Branch in each year since 2009-10; and how many such investigations, fines and prosecutions concerned companies operating in the secondary ticketing industry in each such year.

The Companies Investigation Branch (CIB) became part of the Insolvency Service in 2006 and the work formerly undertaken by CIB is now dealt with by the Insolvency Service Company Investigations Live teams. While company investigations are focused on preventing corporate abuse by placing companies into liquidation rather than identifying criminal misconduct, if any evidence of criminal behaviour is found it may result in a prosecution.

The Insolvency Service does not maintain statistics on the number of prosecutions and fines arising specifically from the work of Company Investigations Live teams, nor are any statistics kept regarding companies operating in the secondary ticketing industry. However, there have been a total of 15 investigations in the relevant period with a reference to ‘Ticketing’, as detailed below. None of these investigations led to a criminal prosecution or fine.