Panorama Blackmore global scandal

DannyCarey

Watched this last night, shocking - the guys running those companies should be thrown in jail. Quite clearly conmen, extracting money for themselves and sending it overseas to shadow companies that they are in. 

Usual story with investors not doing proper due diligence sadly also...

OldMusicGuy

Some of the investors definitely invested in things that were inappropriate, like the guy who said he found it through a Google search and did his own "due diligence". Hard to have too much sympathy for him. However, many of the investors were subject to high pressure sales tactics that were clearly inappropriate and against the regulations, and there was one investor who IIRC had a written assurance from one of the directors that the investment was safe and did not warn him off it, which he should have done as the investment was clearly not appropriate for this guy. 

The real scandal for me was not the minibond per se, but the way the FCA failed to act when it was given evidence of how Blackmore was marketing this inappropriately, and how the directors faced no penalty and were able to carry on doing the same type of thing. 

And the good news is that Liz Truss wants less regulation of financial services...... 

DannyCarey

Andrew Bailey seems utterly incompetent too. 

DannyCarey

The guy Nunn is also a right pretentious scumbag, acting and as this thought leader on LinkedIn. 

eskbanker

DannyCarey said:

Watched this last night, shocking - the guys running those companies should be thrown in jail. Quite clearly conmen, extracting money for themselves and sending it overseas to shadow companies that they are in.

As I recall, there is a fraud investigation underway, so, provided there's enough admissible evidence to secure a conviction, they should expect some accommodation to be provided by Her Majesty....

OldMusicGuy said:

The real scandal for me was not the minibond per se, but the way the FCA failed to act when it was given evidence of how Blackmore was marketing this inappropriately

I imagine there was more credible and reliable evidence made available to them but all the stuff in the documentary about overhearing phone calls in an adjacent office didn't seem particularly helpful, although that aspect was maybe emphasised for the purposes of making good TV, much like getting the RAF guy to bring out his medal.

Malthusian

eskbanker said:

As I recall, there is a fraud investigation underway, so, provided there's enough admissible evidence to secure a conviction, they should expect some accommodation to be provided by Her Majesty....

There's a fraud investigation into LCF, but nobody with a cursory familiarity with how  fraud investigations work in the UK (e.g. anyone who reads Private Eye) is expecting it to come to anything. As far as we know there are no open criminal investigations into Blackmore.

I imagine there was more credible and reliable evidence made available to them but all the stuff in the documentary about overhearing phone calls in an adjacent office didn't seem particularly helpful, although that aspect was maybe emphasised for the purposes of making good TV, much like getting the RAF guy to bring out his medal.

I assume that would be Paul Carlier's testimony about Blackmore's introducers. They were small fry and the stuff overheard from their office is neither here nor there.
The important thing is that the misleading financial promotions meant there was more enough evidence for a competent regulator to trigger an investigation into both LCF and Blackmore and demand comprehensive evidence that all their investors qualified as HNW / sophisticated. That would have inevitably led to an early shutdown and saved millions of personal life savings (and taxpayers' money in the case of LCF) from being lost. There was never any need to rely on Carlier's hearsay as evidence - there was enough right out there in the open.
Ultra high risk investment + misleading adverts aimed at the general public = Ponzi scam. We all know it. Unfortunately we can't say it openly because it means being modded or sued. The FCA by contrast has statutory immunity.

eskbanker

Malthusian said:

eskbanker said:

As I recall, there is a fraud investigation underway, so, provided there's enough admissible evidence to secure a conviction, they should expect some accommodation to be provided by Her Majesty....

There's a fraud investigation into LCF, but nobody with a cursory familiarity with how  fraud investigations work in the UK (e.g. anyone who reads Private Eye) is expecting it to come to anything. As far as we know there are no open criminal investigations into Blackmore.

Yes, Private Eye's scathing references to the Serious Farce Office should set more realistic expectations than a documentary that led viewers to assume that getting these guys banged up should be a straightforward process - I may indeed have misunderstood or misremembered that the fraud investigation mentioned related to LCF rather than Blackmore though!

Parking_Trouble

It's clearly too easy to set up dodgy investment funds, suck all the money out and squirrel it offshore without repercussions.

The Blackmore Global scam was highlighted by the BBC over 4 years ago. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09pjgdn 
Only now are Panorama suggesting Blackmore Global is in danger of collapse when they knew it was a scam years ago.

All them them definitely colluding but hard to prove the connections between them, plus the main perpetrators operating just out of reach of ineffective regulators and the law. The risk of getting caught and jailed is low. Clever people who will continue to get away with it.

Very smooth and persuasive salesman who will claim their victims were made aware of the risks.

Harder now to transfer out of DB schemes into dodgy schemes. That should have been stopped from day one.
They'll just move away from pensions to target people with spare cash trying to maximise returns in difficult times.
Even easier to find victims, aka sophisticated investors.