Builder Vasile Hrusca ordered to repay £190,577

Think of this as a case study you can annotate. On Tuesday 25 November, Snaresbrook Crown Court ordered builder Vasile Hrusca, 41, to repay £190,577, including interest, within three months or face two and a half years in prison. The Insolvency Service says he used company money to clear an Audi RS6 finance deal and sold diggers and other plant still on hire purchase, spending much of the cash on gambling.

The Insolvency Service’s press notice, published on 3 December 2025, sets out the timeline. In January 2018, the Audi cost £74,989 with a £7,500 company deposit and £67,489 on hire purchase backed by a personal guarantee. Two months later came hire purchase deals for seven machines worth £84,829. In September 2019 liquidators were appointed; three months earlier he requested a settlement and moved £67,769 from the company account to clear the car. He later told the court the car has been in Romania since early 2020. Earlier this year he received an 18‑month suspended sentence and a four‑year director ban.

Hire purchase is a way to spread the cost of vehicles or machinery. You make instalments and can use the asset, but the finance company owns it until the final payment or agreed buy‑out. Selling or disposing of the item without the lender’s consent isn’t allowed because you don’t yet own it. That’s why selling the diggers before settling the finance created serious problems here.

A confiscation order under the Proceeds of Crime Act is designed to strip out the benefit from wrongdoing. The court calculates the amount and sets a deadline. Miss it and you can be jailed, and serving that time does not wipe the debt; the money still has to be paid. In this case, the deadline is three months.

When a company cannot pay what it owes, liquidation hands control to a licensed practitioner. Their job is to find assets, challenge suspect transfers, and return what they can to creditors in a set order. From the point a business is insolvent, directors must put creditors first and keep clear records ready for inspection.

Disqualification stops someone from acting as a company director or taking part in company management for a set period. Breaching a disqualification can be a criminal offence. The aim is to protect the public and raise standards of conduct so that honest businesses are not undercut by misconduct.

What this means for you if you run a small firm: keep company and personal money strictly separate. Read finance contracts before you sign. If cashflow turns, speak to an accountant or an insolvency practitioner early. These habits sound simple, but they prevent the kind of decisions that lead to bans, court orders and, potentially, prison.

For media literacy, note the source: an Insolvency Service press release on GOV.UK dated 3 December 2025. Official notices are written to deter as well as inform. When you use one in class or coursework, check the court name, dates and figures, and then look up the company file at Companies House to see how the story developed.

Here’s a classroom exercise you can run this week. In groups, map the timeline from 2018 to 2025 across three columns: company actions, legal responses, and what good governance should have looked like at each step. Then write a short, plain‑English definition of hire purchase, liquidation and confiscation order using one example from the case.

The big takeaway for learners and early‑career entrepreneurs is straightforward: company money is not your money. In tough moments, it can be tempting to reach for easy fixes like selling financed kit or paying off a personal car from the business account. Cases like this show how quickly those choices turn into a disqualification, a confiscation bill and time behind bars.