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Was AVRO trading illegally or fraudulently for the last 2+ years? Was it like a Ponzi Scheme?

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  • ihatetrump
    ihatetrump Posts: 438 Forumite
    100 Posts First Anniversary Name Dropper
    jimjames said:
    ihatetrump said:
    Hopefully the administrators and relevant authorities will track down the Director/Shareholders' other investments and seize them and proceed with criminal charges.

    No chance - this is Great Britain, the home of good old-fashioned white collar crime.  If they could prove that the company was run fraudulently then that would imply that Ofgem wasn't doing its job, highly unlikely given that it's likely that they would be the ones investigating.
    Absolutely. It's 3 years on from London Capital & Finance failing taking £237m of investors money with them and no sign so far of any prosecutions of those who appeared to walk off with the proceeds. Yet if you do over a bookies for £100 the police will be onto you instantly.

    What is particularly galling is how the system (or lack of a system) allows so many to get away with it and the ordinary man in the street pays for it ad-infinitum by way of higher taxes, levies and other costs.

    Jake Brown & his Dad (of AVRO fame) remain as Directors and Shareholders of Sentido Marketing, which had £1.57M in cash in the bank when it last filed accounts - latest accounts are due within a few days - no doubt they will try their old trick of changing the year end by a day to extend their filing deadline.

    They (the Browns) continue to own AVRO Group Limited, which didn't go into administration and through that they own a controlling interest in Dyball Associates.  This where it starts to get really interesting (and murky at the same time), because Dyball was one of the architects of setting up so many of the (many now now failed) off the shelf energy companies. Take a look here:

    https://www.dyballassociates.co.uk/

    Andrew Dyball set up and was involved in so many of these companies - 41 at last count - see here:

    https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/g7cVk9hfY9d_dx5sneMLJ35Enhs/appointments

    Not only that, they are still at it:

    https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11130819/filing-history

    AVRO Commercial Shipping changed it's name in February to Terax Commodities Limited with Jake Brown and Andrew Dyball as Directors - still in the Energy Sector - watch the scams continue........... 

  • Listening to the forensic accountant re Avro and others suggested that they could make a whole series on the failed Companies. That wall of red numbers was quite horrendous - OFGEM should hang their collective heads in shame !!
    I saw the ‘Dispatches’ programme. Pity it was only about 25 minutes long - sure it could have been a lot longer. Unfortunately in the forensic section the companies were just allocated a letter, so could not be identified. Avro, and its directors and ‘consultants’, were singled out for special mention. The makers and Citizens Advice also got well into the ribs of Ofgem. Of course, Mr Jonathan Brearley of Ofgem was noticeable by his absence, as per usual. Has anyone seen a response from Ofgem at all? 
  • ihatetrump
    ihatetrump Posts: 438 Forumite
    100 Posts First Anniversary Name Dropper
    edited 12 April 2022 at 2:05PM
    I think when you look at some of their (Jake Brown et al) links (noted in my post above), you'll find that the forensics have barely scratched the surface - there's more to come you can be sure.
  • brewerdave
    brewerdave Posts: 8,711 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Listening to the forensic accountant re Avro and others suggested that they could make a whole series on the failed Companies. That wall of red numbers was quite horrendous - OFGEM should hang their collective heads in shame !!
    I saw the ‘Dispatches’ programme. Pity it was only about 25 minutes long - sure it could have been a lot longer. Unfortunately in the forensic section the companies were just allocated a letter, so could not be identified. Avro, and its directors and ‘consultants’, were singled out for special mention. The makers and Citizens Advice also got well into the ribs of Ofgem. Of course, Mr Jonathan Brearley of Ofgem was noticeable by his absence, as per usual. Has anyone seen a response from Ofgem at all? 
    They did say that the collapse of Avro could cost £600 million !!
  • ihatetrump
    ihatetrump Posts: 438 Forumite
    100 Posts First Anniversary Name Dropper
    They did say that the collapse of Avro could cost £600 million !!
    Which begs the question why OFGEM didn't listen back in 2018 when Citizens Advice raised the first of their 10 complaints about AVRO?
  • Probably not about Avro, but it sounded like Citizens Advice were voicing qualms to Ofgem generally well before 2018. 
  • They did say that the collapse of Avro could cost £600 million !!
    They didn't recognise those figures....

    Presenter mentioned the Malay (?) company owner not doing customer credit checks. What about Ofgem doing some COMPANY credit checks? 
  • ihatetrump
    ihatetrump Posts: 438 Forumite
    100 Posts First Anniversary Name Dropper
    Many of the failed companies (most of them in fact) were started with little or no shareholder debt - they were funded from the outset by customer advance deposits - credit checks would have revealed nothing - they were all cash rich until the deck of cards collapsed.

    The failure by OFGEM to ring fence and protect customer deposits was the root cause of the failures - the customers were protected because SOLR moved their deposits over the new supplier - but ultimately we all now lose out paying increased costs thru levies put on the sector by OFGEM. 


  •  - but ultimately we all now lose out paying increased costs thru levies put on the sector by OFGEM. 


    Which must be particularly annoying if your supplier has never gone bust, but you are picking up part of the tab for those who have, plus green(washing) levies. I don't mind swings and roundabouts - what I don't want is all swings or all roundabouts. 
  • oliverbrown
    oliverbrown Posts: 522 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Name Dropper
    Governmental level failure. Kwasi Kwarteng should be explaining why Ofgem ignored the warnings. 
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