With yet another bombshell blasting onto the landscape today in the form of a dismal question and answer update from administrators, the core group of victims desperate to get money back from collapsed forex company Premier FX is using every means possible to try and work out how this financial calamity could have been allowed to happen.
According to information received this afternoon, administrators PKF Geoffrey Martin & Co have discovered “66 individual bank accounts with Barclays in various currency denominations, showing an average of 50-100 transactions on each account per day”.
According to the calculations of one member of the group – a UK resident with hundreds of thousands of euros ‘locked’ in the company that shows ‘minimum credit balances’ held at Barclays Bank – this leaves administrators with a ‘worst case scenario’ of checking up to seven million transactions over the last three years.
The Q&A communiqué sent out to Premier FX customers – thought to number around 150 – stresses that “the tracing of funds prior to the Administration will be a time-consuming task” and one for which administrators say they cannot “provide an estimated timescale”.
But much more to the point for ‘victims’ is why are they having to even listen to any of this?
All the authorities in this drama appear to be washing their hands of responsibility for a fraud that happened in plain sight, they say.
Peter Hart of PKF Geoffrey Martin told clients last week that “unfortunately” as Premier FX did not have the right Permissions granted by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), its business was not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
But Premier FX lied (see below), and those lies were there for all necessary authorities to see… for years.
Why then are customers suddenly left to carry the can for being duped, ask the victims?
As one said this afternoon on the Facebook group acting as a lifeline to so many:“You don’t go into a supermarket to buy a packet of Cornflakes and start checking whether they are poisoned, or have the right food standards applied” – that, in all fairness, should be the job of the authorities.
Thus the mood today is one of steely determination to challenge the authorities over their own ‘authority’.
How could both the FCA and Barclays condone these words, for example: “funds held in the client accounts are subject to the same protection under law as if they were held in the client’s own bank account”. These words were written to Premier FX customers as long ago as 2012.
A long-standing customer who sent us this document, entitled “regulation and client account security” said “as you can see, this document was used since 2012 so we know those powers that be in Barclays and the FCA/ FSCS were aware.”
Yet, administrators’ maintain: “the responsibility of ensuring that funds were held in segregated client accounts belonged solely with the directors of the Company. It has been confirmed by Barclays that they were not instructed by the directors at any time to hold funds in such accounts”.
One of many left with life-changing losses as a result of this scandal has commented: “I do wonder who we can trust anymore. It looks like a cover-up to me from all those in authority”.
And there is much, much more: rumours that “large clients” were tipped-off so that they could remove their money during the weeks leading up to Premier FX mid-morning closure on July 27, not to mention the nonsensical cases of people whose money was received long after the date on which the company said it would not be handling any transactions “either in or out”.
Today – out of the blue – administrators have introduced a new date (August 8), suggesting any money received up until then has joined the slew of losses.
One thing is certain as families here, in the UK, Mallorca and beyond mull over developments, not one of these fleeced customers is prepared to roll over and accept that rules were made to protect the guilty.
“I am getting really angry”, said one, a UK resident in Bristol who was using Premier FX to transfer money for a dream house purchase that has now fallen through .
“It’s way past the time for niceties”.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
