Tag: Investment Scam

BLACKMORE GLOBAL; NUNN McCREESH; SLATER & GORDON; PENSION SCAMS

Pension Investments should be prudent and low risk. Not gambling on crap.

BLACKMORE GLOBAL; NUNN McCREESH; SLATER & GORDON; PENSION SCAMS

Blackmore Global is a UCIS (unregulated collective investment scheme) which is illegal to be promoted to retail, UK investors. The fund is run by Philip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh (formerly of Nunn McCreesh – the lead generation and cold calling firm which introduced around 8,000 victims to the scammers who were running the Capita Oak and Henley pension scams in 2012/13).

It is perhaps more than a little ironic that a pair of cold-callers who were facilitating hundreds of victims being transferred into schemes 100% invested in Store First store pods are now running their own investment fund – Blackmore Global.

Slater and Gordon is a very large firm of no-win-no-fee solicitors with an office in Manchester. I met their National Practice Group Leader and specialist in financial litigation and pension mis-selling in April 2015. His name is Craig McAdam. After going through the various scams I was handling at the time, and the appalling damage done by the scammers to thousands of victims, Craig was thoroughly up to speed on how the scams worked. He was also deeply committed to helping the Ark Class Action and other group actions.

Nunn McCreesh was the introducer of contacts for the pension scammers

Craig McAdam confirmed by email on 16.4.15 that he was looking forward to working with me. A week later he sent a draft engagement letter and confirmed that Slater & Gordon’s success fee would be 15% – although he did revise this up to 18% a couple of days later.

The following month Craig McAdam confirmed he would be attending a meeting with Dalriada Trustees and Pinsent Masons with members of the Ark Class Action. He also confirmed he would be talking to one of Stephen Ward’s many victims: a member of the London Quantum scheme whose trustee was Ward’s firm Dorrixo Alliance.

A month later, Craig McAdam was examining the Capita Oak pension scam run by XXXX XXXX and administered by Stephen Ward, and asked me to put forward one of the victims as a creditor. The Insolvency Service had wound up the trustee of Capita Oak: Imperial Trustees Ltd. Craig then asked me if I was happy for Grant Thornton to be appointed as the insolvency practitioner and I confirmed that indeed I was. I felt that Grant Thornton was a competent and ethical firm and could finally unscramble the mess created by the scammers behind Capita Oak and bring some form of resolution to the victims who were all introduced and/or cold called by Nunn McCreesh.

I was delighted that the same day, one of the Capita Oak victims put herself forward willingly and eagerly as a creditor and Craig McAdam confirmed this to Grant Thornton the following day. At the same time, Craig confirmed that one of the London Quantum victims was a client of Slater and Gordon and made a complaint to FCA-regulated Gerard Associates who had acted as the adviser in that case.

Later in June 2015, Craig McAdam confirmed that Slater and Gordon was instructed by the Capita Oak victim who had volunteered to be the creditor in the liquidation of the trustee of the Capita Oak scam. Craig also sent out letters of engagement to other victims.

In July 2015 I sent a copy of the Insolvency Service’s Capita Oak/Imperial Trustee Services witness statement to Craig McAdam. This statement confirmed that Philip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh’s firm Nunn McCreesh had supplied up to 300 leads a month (for 28 months) to the scammers who promoted and operated the Capita Oak scam: Jackson Francis, Sycamore Crown, Sanderson Clarke, Barncroft Associates, Nationwide Benefits Consultants, Speke Admin, Timoran Capital.

The Insolvency Service witness statement mentioned Nunn McCreesh several times:

“Members of Capita Oak indicated they were initially contacted by Patrick McCreesh of Nunn McCreesh and referred to Jackson Francis or Sycamore for the transfer of their pension to Capita Oak. I wrote to Mr. McCreesh to request a copy of any sales and marketing agreement with Jackson Francis or Sycamore and details of commission received.” Nunn McCreesh and their solicitors admitted they had been involved with the scammers and also Transeuro Worldwide Holdings – one of the main operators of the Capita Oak and Henley scams.

However, Nunn McCreesh was unable to produce copies of invoices or sales ledgers for the money received for their part in these scams. Their solicitors also confirmed that Nunn McCreesh received a commission of 8% of sales and the Insolvency Service stated that there was a “lack of transparency” by Nunn McCreesh.

The Insolvency Service also confirmed that some of the victims had been cold called directly by Nunn McCreesh.

Being in possession of the Insolvency Service’s witness statement clearly galvanised Craig McAdam into an enthusiastic confidence to take on the Capita Oak case and asked me to send him through contact details of all the members. He obviously realised that now the scam was clearly documented and the promoters – including Nunn McCreesh – were now identified without any question of doubt. It was also documented in the witness statement that Nunn McCreesh had earned £900k out of providing at least 8,000 leads for the scam – 300+ of which ended up in Capita Oak and 200+ of which ended up in Henley. It is not clear whether the 8% sales commission was on top of this. 8% of £10.8 million would have been a handsome sum indeed.

I provided Craig McAdam with contact details for the Capita Oak Class Action members and on 21.7.15 he confirmed that cases were “being opened up smoothly”. At the end of 2015, Craig attended a meeting of Class Action members and got to meet a group of victims in person. There can be no doubt that Craig, by now, thoroughly understood the wickedness of the scammers and the profound distress and impending financial ruin of the victims.

So for most of 2015, it looked like Slater and Gordon was going to represent the Capita Oak members – all of whom were initially introduced by Nunn McCreesh. And it looked like Grant Thornton was going to be appointed as insolvency practitioner to Capita Oak’s trustee – Imperial Trustee Services Ltd.

In the event, neither happened. But Capita Oak is now in the hands of Dalriada Trustees – appointed by the Pensions Regulator. And the organisers, promoters and administrators of Capita Oak are all under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

Slater and Gordon now represents Nunn McCreesh

In a very curious twist, Philip Nunn and Patrick McCreesh are now running the Blackmore Global UCIS. They are doing the cold calling and the pension administration, as well as running the fund. And you will never guess who their solicitor is: Steve Kunziewicz of Slater and Gordon (Manchester office). And you will never guess who their auditor is: Grant Thornton. You really couldn’t make it up.

Victims of Blackmore Global are indeed extremely distressed. They have either managed to redeem out of the fund at a loss after a protracted struggle, or they are stuck in the fund with no prospect of getting out of it any time soon (if ever).

A year ago, the underlying assets of the fund were confirmed to one victim by Optimus Fiduciaries Ltd, an IoM domiciled company managing the Optimus Retirement Benefits #1 QROPS. Further research discovered these underlying assets were a load of toxic, illiquid, high-risk crap.

Neither Slater and Gordon nor Grant Thornton will confirm what the assets are or how much they are worth – despite Nunn and McCreesh claiming the fund has “£17m under management”. However, £17m is nothing more than a meaningless figure on a piece of paper until such time as the assets are independently verified and audited. Nunn & McCreesh have promised to publish audited accounts for over 12 months now, but failed to do so. One can only assume that to do so would instantly crystallise a true value far below the imaginary £17m and result in a sudden collapse of the fund.

Nunn and McCreesh claim Meriden Capital Partners are the investment manager to the fund

I have asked Steve Kunziewicz of Slater and Gordon on numerous occasions this past couple of months to tell me what the assets are, but presumably Nunn and McCreesh won’t tell their own solicitor – any more than they will tell their own auditors. Perhaps they told the Blackmore Global investment manager, Meriden Capital Partners in Barcelona? The trouble is that Meriden Capital Partners deny that they were ever investment manager to the fund and that Nunn and McCreesh are lying.

I hope the irony of this situation is not lost on the gentle reader: Slater and Gordon solicitors and Grant Thornton being “gamekeepers turned poachers”. My suggestion to both firms is that they should choose their clients carefully and protect their public image diligently. Both firms should decide whether they want to be like Bark and Co who openly represent fraudsters, murderers, insider dealers, hackers, race fixers and other criminals. Or whether they want to be on the side of justice for victims of pension and investment scammers. Because they can’t do both.

September 13, 2017
PREMIER NEW EARTH RECYCLING FUND IN LIQUIDATION

Investors are likely to have lost all their money in Premier New Earth Recycling fund – now in liquidation. The liquidator is Deloittes and they can’t say much, if anything, about what is happening as they are looking into the possibility of claims against third parties and don’t want to prejudice any possible action.

Rather than getting into the nitty gritty of the liquidation of this fund – and the appalling possibility that the investors may very well have lost everything – let us take a good look at the fund itself.

It is a UCIS. Nothing more to say – except:

“Specialist, qualifying, and qualifying-type experienced investor funds are unregulated collective investment schemes which are neither approved nor reviewed by IOMFSA. Once launched, the funds must be registered with the authority within 14 days. These types of funds cannot be sold to the retail public. Access to such funds is only available where investors confirm that they meet the fund type’s minimum entry criteria. This includes a statutory certification that they have read the scheme’s offering document and understand and accept the specific risks associated with that type of fund.”

So, instead of writing lots of fascinating stuff about the wonderful topic of generating energy from rubbish (which I am sure is really interesting and good for the planet), why don’t we stick with the unchallengeable fact that the fund was a UCIS and should not have been promoted to retail investors. End of. No argument. Non-negotiable. Talk to the hand. Stick your UCIS where the sun doesn’t shine.

In fact, the same was true (should have been true) of the Connaught bridging loan fund; EEA Life Settlements; LM; Store First, Park First, Trafalgar Multi-Asset Fund and Blackmore Global. So why did so many advisers promote them and invest their clients’ money in them? £$£$£$£$£!!! Commissions. Backhanders. Sandwiches. And the distressed investors are now paying the appalling price for rogue advisers’ greed and negligence.

And what does this look like from the investor’s point of view?

Appalling investment losses on Premier New Earth Recycling

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As always, Pension Life would like to remind you that if you are planning to transfer any pension funds, make sure that you are transferring into a legitimate scheme. To find out how to avoid being scammed, please see our blog:

What is a pension scam?

FOLLOW PENSION LIFE ON TWITTER TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS PENSION RELATED, GOOD AND BAD.

August 2, 2017
HOLBORN ASSETS AND THE CHAMPAGNE KILLER

Holborn Assets mercilessly leaves its victims facing financial ruin

HOLBORN ASSETS “CHAMPAGNE KILLER” APPROACH TO FINANCIAL ADVICE IS DESTROYING VICTIMS’ LIFE SAVINGS

Holborn Assets “Champagne Killer” approach to financial advice is ruining victims. Holborn Assets is routinely destroying people’s pensions and life savings, and refusing to compensate the distraught victims facing poverty in retirement. The so-called “advisers” at Holborn Assets give investment advice (often unregulated) which entails investing victims’ funds in whatever toxic, illiquid, high-risk rubbish pays the highest commissions, and then leave the devastated investors hung out to dry. Neither the firm nor the “advisers” responsible for this outrage show any compassion or contrition. This is no different to the callous actions of a common drunk, hit-and-run driver.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Holborn Assets also employs Darin Brownlee-Jones: the “Champagne Killer“. A drunk hit-and-run driver who killed an innocent man then walked away to drink champagne. He didn’t stop to try to help the victim he left dying in the road – or show any remorse for the horrible, painful death the poor man suffered.

Holborn Assets seems to make a habit out of employing the unemployable. First, there was Paul Reynolds who was banned by the FCA and fined nearly £300,000 for giving unsuitable and misleading financial advice. The FCA declared Reynolds was not a fit and proper person to give financial advice. But Uncle Bob Parker of Holborn Assets Dubai welcomed him with open arms – and Reynolds has since changed his name to try to conceal his unsavoury past. But I bumped into Reynolds when I was at the Holborn Assets office at the end of 2015 – so I know it is him despite trying to change his appearance as well as his name.

And now there is Darin Brownlee-Jones who is commissioning pension reports for more poor unfortunate victims. These people are transferring their defined benefit pension schemes to offshore QROPS in dodgy jurisdictions where negligent trustees peddle their toxic wares. In one case, Brownlee-Jones has employed a Spanish firm to sign off a DB transfer for a resident of France. The advice is covered (allegedly) by the Spanish insurance regulator (which doesn’t cover pension or investment advice) and not the French regulator or the FCA.

So why would Brownlee-Jones in Dubai get a Spanish firm to provide unregulated advice to an investor in France? In 2003, the FSA had refused an application from Brownlee Jones to perform investment and pension-transfer functions. The reason was that the FSA did not consider him to be a fit and proper person as he had indecently assaulted a woman, caused criminal damage and death by dangerous driving.

I think any reasonable person would agree that Brownlee-Jones was the last person you would want handling investment and pension advice. But Bob Parker at Holborn Assets clearly likes having misfits, FCA rejects, sex offenders, drunks and killers on his team.

Brownlee-Jones: after a belly full of beer in 1999, got into his car and hit a motor cyclist head on. He left the poor man dying in a pool of blood and went to celebrate at his favourite wine bar. He ordered two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne at £95 apiece. When he was arrested, he was quaffing his favourite bubbly – although he probably wasn’t smiling quite so broadly when he was jailed for four years.

The distraught father of the victim said that Brownlee-Jones had treated his dying son “like an animal“. And yet Bob Parker employs this callous killer and encourages him to provide unregulated pension advice to victims in France and Spain.

This routine callousness is shown by Bob Parker and many other Holborn Assets salesmen. Where their victims’ pensions and investments have been decimated by high-risk structured notes and unregulated, toxic, illiquid funds -such as Premier New Earth Recycling – Holborn Assets just shrugs and leaves the victims to face poverty in retirement. Once they have earned their fat commissions from the victims’ pension funds, Holborn Assets doesn’t want to know any more. Bob Parker and his merry men simply walk away without a backward glance.

Holborn Assets has been aggressively targeting new victims with a cold-calling campaign using a well-known boiler-room scam operation in Manchester. The cold calls to Spanish residents are followed up by salesmen such as Jason Ryder who claims that Holborn Assets have offices in Barcelona and Marbella. Of course, Holborn Assets is not licensed to operate in Spain – and once conned into letting these cowboys plunder their pensions for fat commissions and fees, there is no regulator to complain to.

Apart from Bob Parker, Paul Reynolds, Darin Brownlee-Jones and a bunch of other “snake oil salesmen”, there are some people at Holborn Assets who do have some ethics and a conscience. Surely, if these people had any sense they would distance themselves from this cesspit of financial disservice? Why stay with a firm with such an appalling track record?

Below is a list of all the people who work for Holborn Assets (excluding admin and finance). I wonder if a single one of them will feel some sense of disgrace at being a part of this “champagne killer” approach to financial services?

Robert Parker, Phillip Parker, Simon Parker, Gerard Frew, Gerard J Leahy, Adrian Bliss, Alexander Herbert, Andrew Jarvis, Daniel Quinn, Joanne Phillips, Michele Carby, Nicholas Thompson, Rubina Khan, Ryan Quinn, Vince Truong, Paul Barrass, Kapil Mathur, Mark Powsney, Payal Trehan, Richard Hanna, Samuel Ebbs, Simon Burrass, Steve Lawton, Steven Downey, Usman Ahmed, Conor O’Shaughnessy, Anthony Murray, Colin Estlick, Creigh Classey, Jamie Arthur, Gavin Webster, Guillermo Martorell, Adrian Luscombe-Whyte, Tim Sant, Stuart Bichard, Richard Colburn, Kevin Curtis, Alison Sant, Ian Leigh, Darin Brownlee-Jones, Colin Kneale, Bryan Wawman, Vivian Van Eeden.

If not a single one of the above group of people is prepared to put ethics and principles at the top of their agenda and ensure their professional reputations are not sullied by the “champagne killer” approach to financial advice, then there truly is no hope for Holborn Assets.

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As always, Pension Life would like to remind you that if you are planning to transfer any pension funds, make sure that you are transferring into a legitimate scheme. To find out how to avoid being scammed, please see our blog:

What is a pension scam?

FOLLOW PENSION LIFE ON TWITTER TO KEEP UP WITH ALL THINGS PENSION RELATED, GOOD AND BAD.

July 17, 2017
SCAMMERS ARE CRIMINALS – AND MUST BE PROSECUTED
The Pensions Regulator’s Lesley Titcomb has now officially and publicly declared that

scammers are criminals.

This begs the urgent question: why have so few – if any – of them been prosecuted? What we need now is all of the scammers behind bars and the keys thrown away. The purpose of the recently-published ebook “Anatomy of a Pension Scam”

is to get the message out there and warn the public; the financial services industry in the UK and offshore; governments; regulators; ombudsmen; crime agencies, HMRC; and the scammers that this huge financial crime will NO LONGER BE TOLERATED. The authorities who have stood by and allowed this to happen have to snap out of their complacency, laziness and incompetence, and actually take some action to bring these criminals to justice.

£11,000,000,000. That is an awfully big number. But this is what financial fraud cost thousands of victims in 2016 according to reported statistics. How much of this is down to pension and investment scams is anybody’s guess; or whether that is an entirely separate and equally horrifying number is another possibility. Either way, this does nobody any good and harms innocent, hard-working people on a huge scale. It also compromises the very principle of saving for retirement and shakes confidence in the pensions and investment industry as a whole.

Evidence suggests that in the past seven years, there have been many £ billions lost to pension and investment scams – there are no precise “official” figures. But the dreadful fact is that the scammers who were targeting victims back in 2010, continued doing it in 2011; and 2012; and 2013; and 2014; and 2015, and 2016. And they are still doing it today. Happily and profitably. And nobody has stopped them or brought them to account for the horrific financial damage and distress they have caused.

It is hard to decide which is worse: the vicious, greedy, cold-hearted scammers or the feeble authorities who let them get away with it. Repeatedly. But it has to stop. A military-style, zero tolerance campaign has to be waged against all the guilty parties until every last one of them is brought to justice.

The tragic thing about these scams and the misery and financial ruin caused to so many thousands of victims is that this disaster was preventable. HMRC were warned by the industry about the potential for scams if the role of compulsory professional trustee was removed pre 2006. In a letter of March 2004, Nick White, specialist pension solicitor warned:

“It is essential that schemes offering self-administration and wide investment choice should have in place an independent person who has sufficient control of scheme assets to prevent abuse and sufficient knowledge and experience to know abuse when he sees it.

That does not necessarily mean that the system of pensioneer trustees should be retained in its current form but, if it is abolished without an effective replacement, we envisage that within the next 5 years the degree of abuse of such schemes by both incompetent and dishonest individuals will:
- further stain the reputation of pensions generally; and
- severely embarrass the government responsible for letting it happen.
Reputable professionals in the industry and the Government share a common aim of building a system of tax rules that is simple but is robust enough to last for a working lifetime without major overhaul. Such a system needs to contain adequate protections against abuse.”

The warning was ignored. And precisely what Nick White predicted would happen, happened. And it will go on happening until and unless government, HMRC, regulators and police take responsibility for their failings and put in place robust measures to clean up the mess of the past and prevent future disasters.

Nick White’s warning was brought to my attention by Martin Tilley who is director of technical services at Dentons Pension Management. Martin has written some excellent blogs and articles on the subject of pension scams and my favourite has to be this one:

http://www.retirement-planner.co.uk/9344/cleaning-up-pension-scams-with-soap-operas

I am currently in the process of preparing a documentary series about pension and investment scams and I intend to incorporate Martin’s inspired suggestion that a scam can be acted out on screen to show the public exactly how it works. I had in mind Greg Davies to play the role of the scammer:

There are many victims who would be only too happy to help recreate the exact wording – both written and verbal – of the scammers’ pitch. In fact, the ideal case to reconstruct would be the police officer who was scammed out of his police pension and into Stephen Ward’s London Quantum scheme by FCA-registered Gerard Associates (456234) and introducer Viva Costa International. (London Quantum is now in the hands of Dalriada Trustees).

Ward has helpfully recorded his enthusiasm for Osborne’s disastrous pensions “freedoms” in a filmed interview. When asked who was better off as a result, he replied: “Everyone is better off, I certainly mean in relation to UK residents, and that’s because they are going to have greater freedom of choice in terms of how they provide their benefits in retirement age, if anyone is worse off its potentially members of defined benefit schemes, who it is likely, will not have this flexibility.” The police officer who lost his police defined benefit pension to Ward’s scam could play himself and comment on what Ward (who was definitely better off) meant by “flexibility”.
March 29, 2017

HOLBORN ASSETS (OR LIABILITIES?)

This is the claim made by Holborn Assets’ CEO Bob Parker: “We are professional advisers adhering to the company’s mission which is to ensure that you get quality, independent advice and service, that your money is put in the right place at the right time and that you are treated with integrity and respect. Moreover, our unparalleled relationships with the best product providers help to assure that we make available superior investment and protection solutions for the increasingly sophisticated expatriate community we serve.”

Let’s examine this claim in the context of Holborn victim Glynis Broadfoot. She was given rotten advice and service in 2011 which resulted in her losing a significant portion of her final salary pension. Thanks to Holborn Assets, her gold-plated local authority pension was put into high-risk, professional-investor only investments and she then suffered years of extreme worry and distress while she watched the value of her pension plummet.

Far from treating Mrs. Broadfoot with “integrity and respect”, Holborn refused to help her and simply kept taking their fees from her ever shrinking pension pot.

With Holborn recently ordered by the FCA to immediately stop DB pension transfers:

http://www.international-adviser.com/news/1034897/holborn-assets-immediately-cease-pension-transfers

it is now time to put Holborn clearly in the spotlight, make the complaint against them public and correct their claims of “superior investment solutions”. For several years now I have offered Holborn CEO Bob Parker the opportunity to choose between emerging from this debacle the hero or the villain – but Parker has refused to engage. However, Holborn’s Caleb Burgess reached out to me on LinkedIn yesterday so I am sure he will be eager to engage with me to help resolve this matter.

Formal Complaint against Holborn Asset Management, Dubai in respect of victim Glynis Broadfoot

Desired Outcomes:

Full reinstatement of original pension transfer value
Full refund of all fees paid to all parties
Interest at the same rate as would have been earned had the fund remained in the original scheme
Compensation for the anxiety, stress and pressure which have put at risk Mrs. Broadfoot’s health and life for the past five years

Holborn’s Failures:

False and misleading representations about the investments
Mis-sale of professional-investor-only financial products which were unsuitable for a low-risk investor
Undisclosed fees and commissions which were deliberately concealed
Absence of integrity and professionalism
Firm not licensed to provide pension and investment advice in Spain
Negligent and uncooperative in dealing with the complaint for several years

Summary:

Mrs. Broadfoot had been a member of the Local Government Employee Superannuation Scheme for 29 years
Holborn advised the transfer of pension to a QROPS with Gower Pensions, Guernsey, using estimated figures to make the transaction appear more attractive
Holborn did not advise Mrs. Broadfoot of the benefits of remaining in her final salary secured pension
Holborn informed her that the transfer value would be £195,105 – rather than the actual value of £146,376 which gave her false and misleading information about the transfer
Holborn subsequently admitted that the investment choices were poor and claimed that “if there was something (they) could do to turn the clock back (they) would”
Holborn did not advise Mrs. Broadfoot of her initial losses and when she complained they were dismissive and assured her they were “only paper losses”
Holborn Assets informed her, at the height of her distress over her losses, that they “had closed the case, and would not enter into any further correspondence”
Holborn did not disclose their fees of £11K which they were continuing to charge even while her pension was losing money at an alarming rate
Fees of £5,594 paid to Gower were not disclosed by Holborn or agreed by Mrs. Broadfoot
Due to negligent, inappropriate investments made by Holborn, she has lost a substantial proportion of her pension which may result in having to sell the family home and the possibility of her family having to live on government benefits
A Suitability report was undertaken by Holborn Assets which clearly stated: “Annual review to ensure that the underlying investment strategy is still within the member’s attitude to risk”
Annual return was promised at 8% and that Mrs. Broadfoot would never lose any money

Below is an e-mail sent from Robert Parker CEO at Holborn to staff advising them of what to state in an e-mail to Mrs. Broadfoot regarding documentation she had requested:

From:	Bob Parker (robert@holbornassets.com)
Sent:	26 February 2015 07:59:02
To:	Caleb Burgess (caleb.burgess@holbornassets.com)
Cc:	Simon Parker (simon@holbornassets.com); Philip Parker (philip@holbornassets.com); John Broadfoot (broadfootjf@hotmail.co.uk)

If you have already sent transaction detail change the wording on the holding letter and resend. Something like “the attached was sent to you on xx date we are searching our archives for any further information.”

But no transaction details were ever sent to her by Holborn.

In summary, despite the expensive advice given to Mrs. Broadfoot by Holborn Assets, and assurances that her pension would grow at 8% per annum, she ended up losing nearly a third of her fund. So contrary to the firm’s grandiose claims on their website, this victim’s money was put in the wrong place at the wrong time and she was treated with complete callousness and contempt.

March 28, 2017

Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund
TRAFALGAR MULTI ASSET FUND (SUSPENDED)

After the disasters of failed pension schemes Capita Oak, Henley and Westminster (aggregate of £20 million lost to over 500 victims through investments in Store First store pods – wound up by the Insolvency Service), there are now concerns about the suspended Trafalgar Multi Asset Fund of £20 million. The board of directors have published the below report and are investigating how this fund came to be mostly invested in one asset: Dolphin property development loans.

In fact, Dolphin was one of the assets of Stephen Ward’s London Quantum scam which is now in the hands of Dalriada Trustees (appointed by the Pensions Regulator). Dalriada stated a year ago that Dolphin was not a suitable investment for a pension scheme and yet the investment manager of Trafalgar has invested most of the fund in Dolphin.

The unlicensed adviser to the victims was also the investment manager of the Trafalgar fund. The advisory firm, Global Partners Limited – which then changed its name to The Pension Reporter – was an agent of a firm called Joseph Oliver and was not licensed to give pension or investment advice.

Trafalgar Multi-Asset Fund (Suspended) shareholders report (excerpts):

Board’s significant concerns with respect to the conduct of the Investment Manager:
- Repeated and consistent failure to carry out and maintain records of proper due diligence with respect to investments
- Making investments which involve inappropriate or unjustified risk, particularly in allowing the over-exposure to two counterparties and allowing loans to suspected related parties without any disclosure of interests to the Board
- Repeated and consistent failure to ensure that the position of the Fund is properly protected by having appropriate, properly executed legal documentation in place
- Repeated failure to provide the Board with relevant information with respect to investment activity e.g. variations to the arrangements with investments in Dolphin and Quantum
- Inability to answer straightforward questions put forward by the Auditors
- Providing misleading and even dishonest information to the Board
- Transacting business on behalf of the Fund knowing that the Board had suspended subscriptions and redemptions
- Failure to make investments which are appropriate for the Fund
The question must also be asked of STM Group WHY DID THEY ACCEPT BUSINESS FROM AN UNLICENSED ADVISER AND ALLOW THEIR VICTIMS TO HAVE 100% OF THEIR PENSIONS INVESTED IN A FUND WHICH WAS A SCAM? THE TRAFALGAR MULTI ASSET FUND WAS A UCIS WHICH IS ILLEGAL TO BE PROMOTED TO UK RESIDENTS. STM ARE ENTIRELY NEGLIGENT AND CULPABLE FOR ALLOWING THIS SCAM TO HAPPEN AT ALL.
September 13, 2016

Tag: Investment Scam

BLACKMORE GLOBAL; NUNN McCREESH; SLATER & GORDON; PENSION SCAMS

The Insolvency Service also confirmed that some of the victims had been cold called directly by Nunn McCreesh.

In the event, neither happened. But Capita Oak is now in the hands of Dalriada Trustees – appointed by the Pensions Regulator. And the organisers, promoters and administrators of Capita Oak are all under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

Rather than getting into the nitty gritty of the liquidation of this fund – and the appalling possibility that the investors may very well have lost everything – let us take a good look at the fund itself.

It is a UCIS. Nothing more to say – except: