Thousands of Liberty Steel jobs at risk in England as HMRC files winding-up order
As many as 3,000 workers in five of Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel plants across England face losing their jobs after HM Revenue and Customs filed petitions to wind up their operating companies over unpaid taxes.
Gupta’s GFG Alliance metals empire could be at risk if four Liberty companies fail to reach an agreement with HMRC and other creditors, following a year of struggles after the collapse of Greensill Capital, its main lender.
Unions condemned the move as a devastating blow, saying the plants must be kept open because of Liberty’s strategic importance to the UK economy.
The four companies under threat are:
Speciality Steel UK, which employs close to 2,000 people at Rotherham and Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire.
Liberty Merchant Bar at Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire.
Liberty Performance Steels Ltd at West Bromwich in the West Midlands.
Liberty Pipes at Hartlepool in County Durham.
The accounting regulator also announced separately on Thursday that it had opened an investigation into the audit of Liberty Commodities Ltd, another part of the sprawling network of GFG companies.
The audit, covering the year ending 31 March 2020, was carried out by HW Fisher, a London accountancy firm. GFG declined to comment on the investigation. HW Fisher was approached for comment.
The petitions and investigation added to the difficulties facing Gupta as he seeks to keep his businesses afloat while engaging in drawn-out refinancing talks to replace the money borrowed from Greensill, founded by Australian entrepreneur Lex Greensill. Greensill, who later hired former UK prime minister David Cameron as an adviser, had bankrolled the expansion of Gupta’s empire.
The UK’s Serious Fraud Office is also investigating suspected fraud, fraudulent trading
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