{"id":25262,"date":"2014-06-25T14:04:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T13:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=25262"},"modified":"2014-06-25T14:05:47","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T13:05:47","slug":"wonga-committed-a-fraud-why-are-they-being-allowed-to-continue-in-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/06\/25\/wonga-committed-a-fraud-why-are-they-being-allowed-to-continue-in-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonga appear to have committed a fraud. Why are they being allowed to continue in business?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/money\/2014\/jun\/25\/wonga-compensation-bill-unfair-misleading-practices\" target=\"_blank\">Guardian has reported that<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Britain's best-known payday lender,\u00a0<a title=\"More from the Guardian on Wonga\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/wonga\">Wonga<\/a>, has been ordered to pay more than \u00a32.6m compensation after it was found to have sent threatening letters to customers from non-existent law firms.<\/p>\n<p>The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Wonga had been guilty of \"unfair and misleading debt collection practices\". It said the firm would be compensating around 45,000 customers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now before I go further let me define fraud, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxforddictionaries.com\/definition\/english\/fraud\" target=\"_blank\">which the Oxford dictionary says is<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain\n<div><a>\u00a0<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>A person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now let's be clear what Wonga has done. First it has committed a wrongful act.\u00a0Second, by doing so it did expect to gain: it wanted to recover a debt. Third, it did so in a way intended to deceive others by claiming the existence of lawyers who it not only had not engaged, but who did not even exist.<\/p>\n<p>On this definition Wonga appears to have committed a fraud.<\/p>\n<p>Three questions arise. First, why is there no prosecution in that case? This is serious.<\/p>\n<p>Second, why are they still considered fit and proper person to run an organisation regulated by the FCA?<\/p>\n<p>Third, why are the directors allowed to continue to hold that office?<\/p>\n<p>I think answers are needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Guardian has reported that: Britain&#8217;s best-known payday lender,\u00a0Wonga, has been ordered to pay more than \u00a32.6m compensation after it was found to have sent<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/06\/25\/wonga-committed-a-fraud-why-are-they-being-allowed-to-continue-in-business\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}