A marketing company director has been banned from practicing for six years after allegedly making tens of thousands of nuisance calls. Elia Bols was a director of marketing company “AMS Marketing Limited” which was founded in 2016 and was the subject of numerous complaints between October of that year and October 2017.
The UK regulator , the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), has fined Bols £100,000 after concluding that, under his direction, the company had made more than 75,000 nuisance calls. The marketing company's director should have first used the Telephone Preference System (TPS) list of people who choose not to receive unwanted contact , the ICO said.
The fine imposed on the company is pending and Bols now lives in Australia. In addition, the government has ruled that AMS Marketing breached Regulation 21 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). This has resulted in Bols now being banned from acting as a director or from directly or indirectly being involved in the operation or promotion of a company.
Andy Curry, head of investigations at the ICO, said of the case: “Our work with the Insolvency Service has seen the successful closure of 17 directors who have closed their businesses to avoid paying a fine for illegal marketing activity. Nuisance calls, emails and texts can be a huge problem and often cause people real distress. By taking unscrupulous directors out of business, we can help protect the public and their privacy.”
Also, an FOI request made last month revealed that £6.6m, or more than 39% of total fines, are still outstanding. So far, only 13% of fines imposed for nuisance calls have been paid, compared with 54% of penalties imposed for data breaches.
