Stricken VAR's debts revealed
Westwood West owed hundreds of thousands to disties and vendors
The fall-out from the crash of Swindon-based reseller Westwood West continued to reverberate around the channel last week, following the filing of a Statement of Company's Affairs by liquidator Begbies Traynor at Companies House.
The statement, seen by CRN, revealed the reseller owed hundreds of thousands of pounds to various distributors and vendors.
Distributors Micro Peripherals, Northamber, Westcoast, Computer 2000 and Ideal Hardware were owed £15,595, £87,400, £12,354, £22,363 and £32,670 respectively, while Dell Products was owed more than £25,000.
"We don't expect to get money back [from the liquidation]. This is one that should be investigated, as far as we're concerned," said Tracey Perkins, credit control manager at Midwich, which is owed £34,389 by Westwood West.
"The only thing I am surprised at in the whole affair is that we had supported the firm because of an IT deal it had with Laura Ashley."
Representatives of Laura Ashley were not available for comment at the time of going to press.
Andy Beckingham, a partner at Begbies Traynor, originally told CRN there had been concerns about accounting at Westwood West. Beckingham promised last month that a full inquiry would be conducted into the circumstances leading up to the reseller's failure.
Eddie Pacey, group credit services manager at Bell Microproducts Europe, said: "We have known this business for many years. We went to see the reseller before and after it was bought by CCI. "We petitioned for a winding up, but CCI said it would pay us on a weekly basis by direct debit, but this didn't happen. Before we could proceed with a petition for winding up, someone appears to have beaten us to it."