The despair triggered by the vanishing act of a “respected” foreign exchange company almost two weeks ago has developed into a steely determination by clients to get their money back.
Last Thursday the Facebook page “Victims of Premier FX” was launched, as well as the group of the same name.
Says founder Nick Robinson, the focus is “to help the Premier FX clients get their money back”.
Since this bombshell exploded across the region (click here), various ‘unexplained’ developments have come to the notice of Premier FX’s ‘victims’.
The message, for example, on the company’s website has changed from the initial one lodged on Friday July 27 in which directors anticipated that “the liquidators will be contacting customers” to a replacement text a few days later in which whoever is ‘in charge’ said simply: “we will notify you when matters become clearer”.
In the swirling maelstrom of bewilderment and conjecture, only a few salient points are clear:
This drama involves “millions of euros” of client money. Some people claim to have “lost everything”, and there are numerous with hundreds of thousands of euros at stake.
Premier FX clients in Mallorca are “completely in the dark” in that media on the island has ignored the story altogether.
‘Missing’ staff Nick Jones and Cathryn Evans are saying nothing, despite the former having answered his telephone to a client last week, before purportedly hanging up.
Informed sources too are “very concerned” about the truth of Premier FX’s publicity literature guaranteeing that “Client funds are held in secure, segregated accounts at Barclays Bank in London and are fully protected by law”.
Said one: “Companies can make up their own blurb, according to what they want people to believe. Only Barclays can answer this question”.
In the meantime the same source has seen a copy of one of the ‘purported client accounts’ and as far as she can ascertain, “it was just an account named ‘client account’, but there was no indication at all that it was segregated. In fact it looks like all client money was going into one big account”.
The only light in this dismal scenario is the fact that clients have found a way into Premier FX’s ‘back office’ to discover the funds they have ‘stuck in the business’, are still there, if only on paper.
With various sources confident that a statement from the directors is now just a matter of hours away (possibly coming today Thursday, or tomorrow), this appalling situation that involves so many Algarve residents and investors remains a waiting game.
“This is massive” a long-term Premier FX client told us on Wednesday. “I cannot imagine how some people who had 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 at stake may be feeling. It’s absolutely sickening”.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
