H4cked Off: The mystery surrounding 2e2 needs to be unravelled

And then in a last-ditch attempt to sell off the business, administrators FTI Consulting failed to attract a buyer, with the likes of telecoms firm Daisy Group supposedly being deterred by the fact that many of 2e2's customers were frantically looking to jump ship.

Among those heading for the escape hatch was NHS North Central London.

"Following legal advice, NHS North Central London has terminated the contract with 2e2 with effect 7 February 2013 and implemented contingency plans, effectively bringing the service back in-house as an interim measure, pending a longer-term plan with the other affected NHS stakeholder organisations who use the shared IT infrastructure," it said in a statement.

Three days after Alan Owens partner at law firm Morrison & Foerster advised firms to get their data returned as soon as possible, FTI Consulting demanded upfront cash payments from 2e2 datacentre customers to keep the facilities open and operating.

Most shockingly, FTI said that without an overall payment of £960,000 to keep the datacentres open just for this week, it would shut down the datacentres from this Friday - regardless of the knock-on effects on users.

How on earth did it get this bad? TechMarketView's Anthony Miller suggests that it could be just plain bad management before adding "we have our views and they're best kept to ourselves".

Indeed, it seems everyone is keeping their views to themselves. With the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) refusing to "confirm or deny" whether it is investigating 2e2 and FTI Consulting stating that it had "no comment" to make on the matter.

The SFO said it would not divulge information on new or ongoing investigations "for reasons of operational security" and "to ensure that suspects are not alerted to any action which we may take".

While understandable from a security perspective, it does seem that this case needs to be publicised if indeed it is being investigated. Employees who haven't been paid, or left to claim a basic wage from the government, deserve to know what went wrong, who is to blame and what is being done to reprimand them.

Of course, the hope is that this information does come out eventually, and that those most affected by 2e2's collapse somehow find a way to move on to better things, while those to blame for the mess are left to suffer the consequences.

Computing continues to investigate the matter, and will report back on its findings.