Insolvency Practitioner Open Letter: Insolvency Service Corruption & Weaponisation

Introduction: Why This Open Letter is Being Sent to Every Insolvency Practitioner in the UK

This open letter has been sent and is addressed to every Insolvency Practitioner in the UK. It is in response to being on the receiving end of tyrannical treatment by the Insolvency Service and its staff since spring 2022. This is exemplified most notably by former Official Receiver (now Deputy Official Receiver), Michael Bint, who has psychopathically refused to accept responsibility for the Insolvency Service being weaponised as part of a coordinated hate and smear campaign against Lighthouse International Group (now Lighthouse Global).

Through the process of questioning and challenging the potential corruption and incompetence at the Insolvency Service, we are discovering more and more examples of how the Insolvency Service is being used by the establishment to control and subjugate citizens rather than serve them, all dressed up in the name of public interest and service.

NB Because of the devastating impacts the weaponisation of the Insolvency Service has made on Paul S Waugh’s health and wellbeing, this open letter to each Insolvency Practitioner has been prepared and sent on his behalf by team members at Lighthouse Global and Citizen Intervention Global.

UPDATE (7.1.26): An open letter to the incoming Insolvency Service CEO Duncan Beach has also been sent. It can also be read in this article – Insolvency Service CEO Duncan Beach Introduced to Institutional Incompetence & Corruption.

Insolvency Service Incompetence & Corruption: The Case of Michael Bint 

Supported by Gary Seymour, Daniel Curthoys, Mark George, Russell McAlphine, Alex Workman, Edna Okhiria, Dean Beale, Gareth Allen, Alec Pybus, Joseph Sullivan, Victoria Prime, Michael Knights, Karen Baldock

Dear Insolvency Practitioner,

Right up front I will say that I am not only writing to you as an Insolvency Practitioner, but also you as a citizen who is first and foremost in your role to protect fellow citizens. 

This letter comes off the back of personally writing to President Donald J. Trump (ref 1), imploring him and his office’s intervention in the injustices occurring in the UK. This includes cases of corruption involving British institutions including the Insolvency Service and the government’s mouthpiece, the BBC. This is how significant this issue is and one we need to address and solve, which is why I am writing to you.

You are accountable and regulated by the Insolvency Service, a government agency reporting to the Secretary of State and ultimately the British public. It is supposed to operate in the name of protecting us as citizens. 

Yet the Insolvency Service’s true charter, its real unofficial charter, is to realise the aims of the British establishment to subjugate and control British citizens.

I say this given you are a British citizen and if the Insolvency Service is working against citizens, then the whole profession and those in it are working against your fellow citizens, the very people living in your street and members of your own family.

This open letter being sent to all Insolvency Practitioners in the UK accompanies open letters and articles that have been published over the past couple of years in relation to.. 

• Michael Bint, Deputy Official Receiver (ref 2), 
• Kemi Badenoch, when in post as UK Secretary of State (ref 3), 
• High Court Judges (ref 4),
• the senior leadership of the Insolvency Service (ref 5), 
• all Insolvency Service staff (ref 6)
• and collusion with the BBC (ref 7)

The aim of this letter – to make every Insolvency Practitioner aware of the corruption and incompetence in the Insolvency Service that means it is weaponised against citizens rather than serving them. 

This letter covers the following:     

1. Why This Open Letter is Crucial to You 

2. The Problems we endeavour to solve

• For the Insolvency Service itself
• For Insolvency Service Staff
• For Insolvency Practitioners
• For Lighthouse & Other Victims of Misconduct
• For Citizens of the United Kingdom

3. The Collapse of Accountability

4. Pattern of Destruction – The Case of Kids Company

5. When the State Becomes the Weapon

6. The Line Has Been Crossed

7. Why This Matters to You

8. A Call to Every Practitioner of Conscience

1. Why This Open Letter is Crucial to You 

1.1  As a professional entrusted with upholding fairness and integrity within the UK’s insolvency framework, you have every right and deserve to be fully aware of the systemic misconduct now emerging from within the Insolvency Service itself. The culture and the conduct of the Insolvency Service and its staff affect you and your livelihood, either directly or indirectly. Evidence has surfaced of serious procedural abuses, false testimonies, and the weaponising of statutory powers against citizens, actions that undermine public trust and threaten the credibility of the entire profession. 

1.2  We are confident that, in the course of your professional experience, you will have encountered cases in which individuals have been subjected to injustice as a result of procedural failures, incompetence or institutional neglect. Unfortunately, the Insolvency Service’s recent actions appear motivated not by reform or restoration, but by destruction and suppression of accountability.  

1.3  As we mentioned previously, at the heart of this national problem is a simple but devastating truth: the Insolvency Service has departed from its moral and public-service mandate, allowing corrupt, unlawful, and inhumane behaviour to flourish. It is no longer serving UK citizens but punishing them through the abuse of highly specialised insolvency law and technicalities. As a result, the insolvency industry profits at citizens’ expense, while you, as an Insolvency practitioner, remain exposed to corrupt and incompetent practices from within the very agency meant to support you and uphold a standard.

1.4  In response, Citizen Intervention Global, supported by Private Prosecution Services UK (PPS), is launching a national accountability initiative to expose wrongdoing, demanding institutional reform, and holding to account the individuals (like Deputy Official Receiver Michael Bint) who are responsible for these failures.

1.5  This is your opportunity to be informed, to scrutinise, and, where appropriate, to stand with others in defending the integrity of your profession and the justice system it serves.

2. The Problems We Endeavour To Solve

2.1   The crisis now unfolding is not confined to a single department or a few bad actors — it is systemic. The problems span every level of the Insolvency Service ecosystem and affect every stakeholder connected to it.

2.2  For the Insolvency Service itself

• A pattern of false statements, selective disclosure, and deliberate misrepresentation of facts in court proceedings.
• A collapse of internal oversight where misconduct is rationalised as administrative error.
• A widening gap between the Service’s stated mission of fairness and integrity and its actual conduct.
• The erosion of public confidence in both the Insolvency Service and the rule of law.
• Growing exposure of senior officials and case officers to personal liability under misconduct and data-protection laws.
• The looming precedent that, if wrongdoing were ever formally acknowledged, the financial and reputational cost of rectifying historic cases would be immense.

2.3  For Insolvency Service Staff

• Employees are routinely instructed to implement actions that may be unlawful or unethical, yet lack the training or authority to challenge them.
• Internal whistle-blowers face retaliation, isolation, and/or career jeopardy.
• Many staff have become complicit through silence, unable to claim ignorance once wrongdoing has been exposed.
• Increasing numbers risk future criminal or disciplinary proceedings for abuse of powers delegated to them by the Secretary of State.
• Honest staff suffer the loss of professional dignity and moral clarity, the people who joined to serve the public, not to harm it.

2.4  For Insolvency Practitioners

• Practitioners’ reputations are being damaged by association with a discredited regulator.
• Decisions made on incomplete or manipulated evidence expose practitioners to liability and reputational harm.
• The profession’s ethical standards are being undermined by a regulator that no longer models the very standards it is responsible for enforcing.
• An honest Insolvency Practitioner faces moral and professional conflict between compliance with a corrupt agency and a duty to fairness.
• In the long term this breeds market instability, distrust between creditors and debtors, and declining confidence in UK insolvency as a profession.

2.5  For Lighthouse & Other Victims of Misconduct

• Organisations and their directors have been subjected to systemic abuse, false testimony, selective evidence, and malicious intent.
• Reputations and livelihoods have been destroyed; with families and their well-being ruptured.
• Judicial actions, such as the warrant of arrest against Shaun Cooper, were based on incomplete or misleading information.
• Medical and human-rights evidence was ignored or dismissed, revealing an inhumane and punitive culture within the Service.
• Collaboration between the BBC and the Insolvency Service to shape public perception demonstrates state–media collusion.
• The Lighthouse experience is emblematic of institutional betrayal: when moral leadership fails, lawful citizens suffer.

2.6  For Citizens of the United Kingdom

• Ordinary citizens risk being criminalised for administrative or procedural matters rather than genuine wrongdoing.
• Families and livelihoods are destroyed through excessive and unjust use of insolvency powers.
• Laws designed to protect creditors and rebuild trust are being used to intimidate and silence.
• The broader social cost is distrust in government, a collapse of faith in justice, and a growing culture of fear.
• When public institutions cease to serve, the entire nation becomes poorer — morally, legally, and economically.
  
  

3. The Collapse of Accountability

3.1  For several years, Citizen Intervention Global has documented what we would describe as systemic incompetence, maladministration, and corruption within the Insolvency Service. Among the most serious findings are:

• A detailed chronicle of investigative and procedural failures in a number of high-profile and lesser-known cases;
• Allegations that Insolvency Service officials, with the knowledge of the Secretary of State’s department, failed to investigate or validate key material evidence, leading to unjust outcomes; and
• The claim that the Insolvency Service has been weaponised, using process and technicalities to destroy reputations and companies rather than to serve the public interest.

3.2  The aforementioned cases expose deep-rooted failings that have destroyed reputations, livelihoods and public confidence in the system you operate within. A detailed account, found in this Insolvency Service Injustices Accountability Letter, sets out how official receivers and case officers repeatedly breached procedural fairness, withheld evidence, provably lied in court on more than one occasion and ignored statutory duties of care. It exposes an institutional culture more concerned with self-protection than justice.

3.3  Further, A Gross Failure in Their Duty of Care by Michael Bint and the UK Insolvency Service shows how senior officials, including Deputy Official Receiver Michael Bint, ignored basic standards of diligence and impartiality expected of public officers. Shortly after Michael Bint was held publicly accountable towards the end of 2023, we saw him step away from his role as Official Receiver. It has only been in recent months that he’s returned to his work at the Insolvency Service, but in the demoted role of Deputy Official Receiver. Given the coincidence of timings with these changes, we have good reason to believe that this change in Michael Bint’s job title is connected to his competence being questioned publicly with evidence-based facts and logical reasoning. Therefore it’s fair to assume he would be extremely bitter and resentful towards anyone who’s held him accountable… subjective feelings that would likely cloud his judgment further.

4. Pattern of Destruction – The Case of Kids Company

4.1  These experiences are not isolated. The high-profile case of Kids Company stands as another devastating example of how the Insolvency Service can act with unchecked power, distort process, and try to escape accountability for its failures. There are other cases that we are researching and investigating based on provable facts, evidence and sound reasoning. This discovery is in order to understand the institutional issues that need to be addressed and truly reformed in a way that genuinely serves the public, not public officials.

4.2  In the case of Kids Company, the innocent charity destroyed by Insolvency Service oppression, it is shown how a nationally respected charity, serving vulnerable children for more than two decades, was dismantled by unfounded allegations, procedural recklessness, and a weaponised pseudo-investigation. A senior judge later condemned the Insolvency Service’s conduct as unfair, biased, and oppressive, yet no admission, apology, or reform ever followed.

4.3  If a high-profile organisation with trustees, advisers, and public visibility could be treated in this way, what protection exists for smaller companies, directors, or practitioners operating quietly within the system? The message is unmistakable: no one is beyond the reach of an unaccountable authority! 

4.4  A Gross Failure in Their Duty of Care by Michael Bint and the UK Insolvency Service further illustrates how senior officials, including Deputy Official Receiver Michael Bint, ignored the most basic standards of care, diligence, and impartiality required of public officers. These are not oversights; they are systemic derelictions of duty. Where an institutional framework prioritises the preservation of the system itself over the rights and welfare of the individuals it is mandated to serve, it ceases to be fit for purpose. In such circumstances, the system risks operating not as a mechanism of lawful order and public protection, but as one that entrenches injustice, suppresses accountability, and undermines the very principles it exists to uphold.

5. When the State Becomes the Weapon

5.1  The pattern extends beyond one department. The State’s legal mechanisms, once designed to uphold justice, have been weaponised to silence, discredit, and destroy. What began as bureaucratic negligence has devolved into the weaponising of the State itself.

5.2  Articles such as The Double Standards of the Media and Insolvency Service expose how media narratives and state agencies have operated in tandem to obscure truth and protect wrongdoing, applying different standards to different citizens.

5.3  Meanwhile, Extra Lessons for Karen Baldock, Dean Beale, Michael Bint & Gary Seymour – UK Insolvency Service, further evidence demonstrates how senior figures, including Deputy Official Receiver Michale Bint, Senior Examiner & Deputy Official Receiver Karen Baldock and former CEO Dean Beale, failed to meet their professional obligations of transparency and oversight, even when confronted with credible evidence of malpractice. 

5.4  Quite frankly, it has been deeply concerning, and frankly embarrassing, to have to explain to senior Insolvency Service professionals the most basic financial concepts, such as what constitutes an asset or a creditor. 

5.5  Through all the efforts to hide their incompetence, the Insolvency Service have, over the years in our case alone, probably wasted millions of taxpayer money directly and indirectly through this process on court hearings and everything associated with this process. This completely avoidable expense has been incurred trying to cover up their lack of rigorous due diligence and analysis…  including a continued insistence not to investigate provably false claims from their original sources. 

5.6  These are not isolated missteps; they are symptoms of institutional decay and a stark reminder that unchecked authority breeds systemic decay, and that professional silence only emboldens further misconduct.

6. The Line Has Been Crossed

6.1  This is no longer a question of internal correction – we have attempted to reason and follow all official channels, only to find ourselves stonewalled time and time again despite possessing extensive research and evidence, self-evident truths and logical reasoning. Our experience through our attempts to find fair, just and reasonable outcomes has demonstrably shown that the system has proven incapable of regulating itself. This is why Citizen Intervention Global, supported by PPS UK, are now in the process of initiating:

• Contacting President Donald J. Trump through a series of open letters, appealing for his intervention in the weaponisation of the UK government, its collusion with state-controlled media, and the corruption and misconduct within the Insolvency Service. These letters are published publicly as part of a broader campaign for international scrutiny and reform. Included in these letters will be case studies along with the people who have been informed. We will highlight those who have acted and endeavoured to be part of the solution, as well as identifying those individuals who are complicit because of the direct involvement or their indifference and inaction. The first Open Letter to President Trump can be found here. 

• A Class Action / Group Litigation – We are currently undertaking the appropriate discovery and preparatory work for a potential class action against the Insolvency Service and the Secretary of State, with the objective of establishing accountability and driving institutional reform. We are involving others into a conversation; and

• Private prosecutions against individuals implicated in misconduct in public office, perjury, and abuse of process.

6.2  No public officer should ever again be able to hide behind bureaucracy or ministerial immunity. The principle is clear: institutions must answer for systemic failures, and individuals must answer for personal wrongdoing. If public accountability for a public officer is not possible, then any honest, hardworking citizen can find themselves having state resources weaponised against them. When this happens, especially when any allegations are provably false, then it’s clearly revealed that the two-tier justice system is very much in operation. In short, this is tyranny, and contradicts the very values that the British Government claims British citizens ought to live by in a free, democratic society.

  

7. Why This Matters to You As an Insolvency Practitioner

7.1  As an Insolvency Practitioner, you operate on the frontline of a system now under question. The integrity of your profession and industry depends on public confidence in the regulatory and investigatory institutions that govern insolvency practice. If the Insolvency Service fails in its duty, that affects the credibility of the entire ecosystem of the Insolvency industry and profession, which includes you and your livelihood.

7.2  You may have clients, or may in the future have clients, who could similarly be impacted. Early awareness of these issues may assist you in advising those clients. This initiative is not only about redress for past wrongs: it is about driving reform. If the Insolvency Practitioner community speaks up, we can help shape a more robust and orderly system of scrutiny and accountability. 

7.3  It’s not only your clients who could be affected, but you as well. Incompetence and/or corruption at the Insolvency Service will inevitably affect you and your livelihood, indirectly and directly. 

7.4  Your contribution (anonymously or otherwise) could strengthen the evidence base for the class action and private prosecutions. The bottom line is that the system reforms for the better for the entire ecosystem of the Insolvency profession and industry.

8. A Call to Every Insolvency Practitioner of Conscience

8.1  Your voice matters. We are now appealing directly to the insolvency community. Submit your account confidentially and help ensure that these patterns are exposed and addressed.

1. Stay informed. Register to be updated with the latest news on the class action, private prosecutions, and further developments. <Click here>
2. Review the evidence. If you’d like to learn more about the past, present and future case studies to examine accounts, timelines, and case materials, then please express your interest by replying to this email. A growing range of articles can be found here. 
3. Share your experience. If you have encountered incompetence, corruption, or procedural abuse by the Insolvency Service as an Insolvency Practitioner, submit your account confidentially. <Click here>

8.2  The State has been weaponised. Integrity in this profession cannot survive in silence. Collective courage is now required. It is time for professionals of conscience to take a stand! 

Yours resolutely,

Paul S. Waugh

Citizen Intervention Global
in association with Private Prosecution Service UK (PPS)
www.paulswaugh.com

Insolvency Practitioner References – Most Pertinent Open Letters & Articles Published by Lighthouse Global In Relation To The UK Insolvency Service & Deputy Official Receiver Michael Bint

Ref 1: Informing the President of the United States about Insolvency Service corruption & incompetence 
Ref 1.1: Open Letter From Paul S. Waugh To President Donald J. Trump

Ref 2: Educating the public on Michael Bint’s inhumane, tyrannical & corrupt conduct
Ref 2.1: Michael Bint, Insolvency Service: A Public Official Who Must Be Held Accountable
Ref 2.2: Two Blatant Lies in Court, One Weaponised State: How the Insolvency Service and Michael Bint Misled the Judiciary
Ref 2.3: A Gross Failure In Their Duty Of Care By Michael Bint And The UK Insolvency Service
Ref 2.4: Extra Lessons For Karen Baldock, Dean Beale, Michael Bint & Gary Seymour – UK Insolvency Service

Ref 3: Complaint to the Secretary of State
Ref 3.1: Complaint Letter To the Secretary of State For Business & Trade: Kemi Badenoch

Ref 4: Holding High Court Judges accountable to justice & the truth
Ref 4.1: Letter To High Court Judge Regarding The Inhumane Disregard For The Health And Recovery Of Lighthouse Directors
Ref 4.2: Formal Demand to Judge Raquel Agnello for Correction of Record and Judicial Accountability: Two Blatant and Provable Lies

Ref 5: Calling out Insolvency Service leadership inadequacies
Ref 5.1: Lessons, Advice And The Rallying Cry To All UK Insolvency Service Victims: A Terms Of Resolution Letter To CEO, Dean Beale And Official Receiver Gareth Allen
Ref 5.2: Holding The Insolvency Service Accountable For Continued Harassment (Open Letter)
Ref 5.3: Insolvency Service Injustices Accountability Letter
Ref 5.4: Public Accountability Through Open Letter To Alec Pybus, Insolvency Service CEO

Ref 6: Inviting Insolvency Service staff to take responsibility for organisational reform
Ref 6.1: Every Insolvency Service Employee Called to End Institutional Immunity

Ref 7: Collusion between the Insolvency Service & the BBC
Ref 7.1: Predatory BBC Journalists Exposed For Heinous Insolvency Service Collusion