Ilir Aliaj

Introduction

Ilir Aliaj is a former director of Heswall Detailing Services Ltd, a car detailing company named for the Heswall area, who was disqualified as a company director for 11 years with effect from 13 August 2026. The Insolvency Service’s public register of disqualified directors, which carries the case under the company’s registered number 09228007, records that he caused Heswall to apply for and obtain a £50,000 Bounce Back Loan using an overstated turnover figure when he knew or ought to have known the company was not entitled to receive the sum, and that he then failed to use the loan funds for the economic benefit of the business as the scheme’s terms required. The money barely touched the business: the loan arrived on 13 May 2020 and £50,000 had been transferred out to his personal bank account by 26 June 2020. The company entered creditors’ voluntary liquidation in August 2023, with a £41,972 claim on the loan still outstanding.

Background Information

The scheme at the centre of the case is described on the register entry itself. The Bounce Back Loan scheme permitted a business to borrow up to 25% of its turnover in the calendar year 2019, subject to a maximum of £50,000, and required that the funds be used for the economic benefit of the business. Entitlement therefore turned entirely on the turnover figure the applicant declared, with the understanding that the money would finance the trading company, not its officers.

Heswall Detailing Services Ltd had been incorporated on 22 September 2014, giving it more than five years of trading history — and banking record — by the time the pandemic loan window opened. Bank analysis later carried out showed the company’s bank receipts totalled £74,970 for the calendar year 2019. On the scheme’s formula that receipts figure supported a loan of roughly £18,742 at most; the company instead received the full £50,000. The register entry sets all of this out under the company number 09228007, together with the length and start date of the disqualification, and states the information shown was correct as at 27 July 2026.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Director disqualified for 11 years over an inflated Bounce Back Loan. The disqualification order starts on 13 August 2026 and runs for 11 years.

The register entry puts the conduct in two parts. The first is the application. Mr Aliaj applied for a £50,000 Bounce Back Loan declaring that Heswall’s annual turnover was £200,000 — a figure close to three times the £74,970 of bank receipts the company actually recorded across 2019. The register’s stated finding is that in making the application he “knew or at the very least ought reasonably to have known” that the amount applied for and obtained exceeded what Heswall was properly entitled to under the scheme. As a result of the overstatement, the company obtained £31,258 more than it was entitled to.

The second part is where the money went. On 13 May 2020 the £50,000 in loan funds was paid into Heswall’s bank account, which at the time stood £2,284 in credit. Between 13 May and 26 June 2020, no trading income whatsoever was received into that account. On 26 June 2020 the entire £50,000 was transferred to Mr Aliaj’s personal bank account. Despite requests, he has failed to provide any evidence demonstrating that the Bounce Back Loan funds were applied for the economic benefit of Heswall, and the register’s finding is that in causing that transfer, having regard to the scheme’s terms, he knew or at the very least ought reasonably to have known that the funds were not being used in accordance with those terms. In the space of six weeks a coronavirus support loan passed through a dormant company account and out to its director.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The formal consequence is the disqualification itself: 11 years, at the longer end of the bans handed down in Bounce Back Loan enforcement, recorded against his name on the Insolvency Service’s public register from 13 August 2026. The consequences for the company and its creditors appear in the same entry. Heswall made repayments of £8,581 in respect of the loan. It entered creditors’ voluntary liquidation on 18 August 2023, and a claim of £41,972 in respect of the Bounce Back Loan has been submitted in the liquidation by the bank. Set against the £50,000 obtained, that means around a sixth of the loan was ever repaid, with the remainder falling into the insolvent estate.

Current Status

The disqualification order starts on 13 August 2026 and, at 11 years, runs into August 2037. For that period Mr Aliaj is barred from acting as a company director or being involved in the management of a company, which is the effect the register entry itself records. The entry, with the findings summarised above, remains publicly accessible on the Insolvency Service’s disqualified directors register, stated as correct as at 27 July 2026. The liquidation of Heswall Detailing Services Ltd continues as the vehicle through which the bank’s £41,972 claim falls to be dealt with.

Impact on Their Career/Life

An 11-year disqualification is among the lengthier outcomes of the Bounce Back Loan enforcement wave, and this one rests on two legs the register treats as distinct failures: the inflated declaration of £200,000 of turnover against £74,970 of receipts, and the prompt transfer of the entire loan to a personal account followed by an inability to evidence any business use. The company he incorporated in September 2014 is in liquidation with the bulk of the loan unrepaid, and the funds that moved — £50,000 out to his own account within weeks of receipt — are documented in the register entry itself. Until August 2037 he cannot lawfully take a formal role in running a UK company, and the findings remain attached to his name on a public register searchable by anyone he may approach in business.

Sources

• The Insolvency Service, “Disqualified Director Details: Case details for Ilir Aliaj” — source