With paint peeling off the windowsills and a scrawny Buddleia sprouting from the weed-strewn front garden – it hardly looks like the HQ of a £50billion global business empire.
Yet this neglected £155,000 terraced house in Bolton is the registered home of a string of businesses claiming to be major corporations with offices spanning four continents.
They include 1 Stallion Limited, supposedly a financial and mining company with an annual turnover of £12.5billion; e-bank Ltd, which claims to be a bank turning over £952m; and Avantulo SA Ltd, an oil and gas firm worth £12.5n of share capital.
The businesses were identified by Dan Neidle, from think tank Tax Policy Associates, as part of a report that claims to highlight how fraudsters and fantasists are registering fake firms – including those posing as banks – on Companies House.
These are accompanied by fabricated balance sheets to make them look hugely valuable, raising fears they could be used to trick unwitting victims into handing over their cash for imaginary services or investment opportunities.
In many cases, people living in properties that are registered on Companies House – the UK’s official companies register – as the headquarters of fake businesses have no knowledge of their existence.
When knocked on the door no one answered. All the blinds were closed and neighbours said they did not know who lives there.
Near to the one-bedroom house in Bolton is another entity calling itself XYZ Investment Holdings Ltd, formerly Stallion Holdings Ltd, which claims to boast £7bn of assets and £2.5bn in yearly sales.
A Facebook page under its previous name features a disturbing ‘job advert’ appealing for ‘good looking and single’ women aged between 25 and 30 to apply to become an ‘executive secretary’ for a salary of as little as £4,788 a year.
Stallion Holdings Ltd also had its own website designed to make it look like a legitimate bank – including a mission statement boasting of its supposed record of ‘putting clients first’ and ‘treating your business as if it were our own’.
Mr Neidle has gone through the filed accounts of all the companies listed at both the terraced house and the neighbouring property and insists – based on a series of errors, spelling mistakes and obvious warning signs – that they are fabricated.
In the case of XYZ Investment Holdings Ltd, a line in its accounts states – despite the business claiming to be involved in finance – that it is a ‘leading international supplier of components to the door and window industry’.
‘You can tell these accounts are clearly fake,’ Mr Neidle – who spent 25 years as a specialist tax lawyer – told .
‘They contain strange wording and typos here and there. Then there’s a line saying it supplies doors and windows, which is clearly copied and pasted from somewhere else.
‘It’s hard to say what the point of all these companies might be. What they are doing is not going to be something good. And it’s probably abroad, because people in the UK would be likely to see that registered address and the accounts and be sceptical.’
Any company wishing to call itself a ‘bank’ in the UK must receive a licence from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
While there is no evidence e-bank Ltd was ever given such a licence, another company connected to the two Bolton properties was apparently able to obtain FCA registration as a small payment institution.
Stallion Financial Investments plc applied to the FCA in 2017 for permission to offer regulated financial services but was turned down after failing to respond to its questions. It did not file accounts and was later dissolved.
However, a new company was set up a year later – AR Worldwide Services Ltd – which applied and obtained FCA registration as a small payments institution. It listed Stallion Holdings Ltd as its first director,
Small payment institutions are able to offer a limited range of payment services including foreign remittances – which, as previously revealed, has been identified by police as a method used by criminals to launder money.
Mr Neidle said he was deeply concerned that AR Worldwide – a firm controlled by a company he insists is fake and posing as a financial institution – had been able to obtain FCA registration.
The FCA noted that Stallion was only appointed as a director of AR Worldwide in December 2019 – a month after it was registered with the regulator.
It said it had since ‘overhauled’ its checks and wanted additional powers to carry out more intensive analysis of firms requesting registration.
Mr Neidle is calling for businesses to be subjected to proper checks before they can be registered on Companies House.
‘I’ve spoken with pretty sophisticated business people abroad who are astonished that you can just register a company like this without any checks,’ he said.
It comes after Money Mail revealed how one street in Wales is now home to 48 companies that have been set up since November 2023, with the majority registered by Chinese nationals.
As of early last year, this included 39 cattle and buffalo-rearing companies, two companies growing citrus fruits and an assortment of other firms ranging from manufacturers of inorganic basic chemicals to one that raises swine.
Two archbishops, two archivists and a banker had also seemingly been registered as company directors purporting to run businesses on the street.
It was only once the neighbours started to share information that they realised the scale of the problem and just how many households had been targeted.
Although it amused some at first, having a fake company registered at your address can cause havoc – and in the worst cases risks bailiffs turning up if the company has run up debts.
A Companies House spokesperson said: ‘We take fraud against the register seriously and all allegations are fully investigated.
‘Since March 2024, we have been using our new powers to crack down on the misuse of the register by querying information provided by companies.
‘Where incorrect, suspicious, or fraudulent filings are made, we will take appropriate action. We proactively share information with other relevant government agencies and law enforcement.
‘We are developing systems and processes to enable more checks to determine the accuracy of information delivered to us before it is placed on the register.’
The FCA said: ‘We have overhauled the checks we do on firms seeking to register with us, including undertaking financial analysis.
‘We will take action if information we are given by firms is incorrect and we’re not told of any changes.’