DTI winds up wrong Rhodium

The Department of Trade and Industry's official receiver arm has admitted winding up the wrong company in the case of multimillionaire IT tycoon Joe de Saram.

The Department of Trade and Industry's official receiver arm has admitted winding up the wrong company in the case of multimillionaire IT tycoon Joe de Saram.

De Saram, 28, who owes creditors more than £1m, is currently in Sri Lanka. Last week, the High Court compulsorily wound up Rhodium plc, his Sheffield-based encryption technology company.

Owing to a technicality, however, the wrong company - newly formed Rhodium plc, which produces motherboards and hard drives as well as encryption software - was instead wound up by the official receiver. A new court order was issued three days later and the correction made.

A representative of the receiver said the problem occurred when the name of the original Rhodium was changed to 'I Love My Encryption Technology plc' during the period between the petition date and the court order date for the winding up of the firm.

De Saram has insisted that he was the victim of a government conspiracy, and said his Sheffield home had been bugged. He claimed the reason for the surveillance was because of "government jealousy" surrounding his encryption technology, which he said is "light years ahead of the competition".

"I changed the name of Rhodium to I Love My Encryption Technology plc weeks ago. It is that firm which should have been wound up, not the new Rhodium," he said.

De Saram claims he is in the middle of setting up a multi-billion pound hardware firm with sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke, and will be "more than able to meet his debts".

First published in Computer Reseller News