Archives for January, 2014

3 Landsbanki Former Executives Indicted in a Fraud Criminal Investigation

 

 

AFP January 30, 2014 at 17:50

 

Three former executives of the Luxembourg subsidiary of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki were indicted for fraud in Paris, announced Thursday AFP a source close to the case.

 

The court granted prior information on the Icelandic financial crisis of 2008 mortgage was opened in 2009 after complaints from individuals who are victims of this controversial financial product, including Enrico Macias singer.

 

Before the investigation, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke has already indicted in 2011 Luxembourg subsidiary in bankruptcy for “fraud” and “lack of approval.” The judge placed under judicial supervision with the obligation to pay a deposit of € 50 million, a record amount in France.

 

It is now the men who sold the loan that are covered in a folder at the root of a showdown between the French and Luxembourg justices.

 

In recent weeks, Mr. van Ruymbeke delivered indictments for “scam” of three former executives of the bank: Torben Bjerregaard Jensen, a Danish national, Olle Lindfors, a Swede, and Failly Vincent, a Belgian, according to the source familiar with the matter.

 

Cash-strapped, Landsbanki has offered through its subsidiary in Luxembourg from 2006 to 2008 for individuals to mortgage their homes in exchange for favorable loans.

 

Assembly, complex, meant that the borrower receives a portion of the sum, while the bank reinvested the rest markets. The value of this portfolio would grow to the point of covering all aspects of the loan, which was repayable upon its conclusion.

 

“In this scheme, the bank was never losing,” said another source close to the case, the fraud totaling tens of millions of euros. “If things went well, everyone won. If things went wrong, the bank recovered a house. ”

 

Before the judge, the three men indicted contested that Landsbanki Luxembourg could promise customers that the investment returns would cover all repayments, according to a source close to the investigation.

 

Entering receivables

 

Hundreds of individuals, particularly in the south of France, Spain and Portugal, had signed these loans.

 

But in the wake of the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers bank in September 2008, several Icelandic banks had collapsed, including Landsbanki, which was nationalized in emergency.

 

Consequence of the crisis, the investments offered by Landsbanki Luxembourg have lost much of their value. Moreover, some of these investments were other than obligations of the parent company. Paid once for subscribers to find other means to repay their loans.

 

Where complaints of fraud by these individuals, some of whom have been ruined. They accuse the bank knowingly proposed financial package without checking the repayment capacity of clients.

 

The case is also played in Luxembourg. In bankruptcy, a subsidiary of Landsbanki has assigned its subscribers before the Justice of the Grand Duchy to enforce the loan guarantee-to-sell the mortgaged homes in order to pay its own creditors, chief among them the Central Bank of Luxembourg.

 

In early 2012, the Luxembourg court objected that the liquidator of the subsidiary pays the deposit of € 50 million ordered by the French justice.

 

At the request of the plaintiffs, Judge van Ruymbeke responded by ordering the seizure of mortgages held by the bank on several investors. A decision which has theoretical consequence to prohibit Landsbanki claim to French investors the loan.

 

However, the bank appealed that decision in an appeal that will be reviewed in February by the investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal of Paris.

 

AFP

Source: http://www.liberation.fr/economie/2014/01/30/trois-ex-cadres-de-landsbanki-luxembourg-mis-en-examen-pour-escroquerie_976644

 

 

 

Rothschild…Dewsnip, Danske, Nykredit and Sydbank mentioned in Parliament

Conservative Treasury minister Sajid Javid has vowed to ask Rothschild about the fate of more tan 100 victims of the Equity Release scam, following Labour MP Huw Irranca-Davies call on the Rothschild bankers to fulfil their “moral responsibility” to people living in fear of “penury”.

Video

Intervention starts at 17:08.

Source: UK Parliament Live TV  | Transcripts

 

The Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited Operating Clandestinely

The CNMV´s building

 

The Spanish regulator CNMV has confirmed that the Premier Group is a clandestine operation in respect to its activities in Spain. A letter received at the law firm Lawbird Legal Services lists a number of firms that have operated in Spain illegally, including The Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited, SL Mortgage Funding nº 1 Limited and The Premier Balanced Fund PLC.

Other banks that have operated furtively are ABN Amro N.V. (Gibraltar Branch), International Property Finance (Spain) Limited, BNP Paribas Trust Company (IOM) Limited and Banca del Gottardo.

 

 

 

CNMVLetter10012014

2 Danske Bank executives to appear in a Fuengirola Court over fraud allegations

 

 

Henrik Hjerrild Hansen & John Lundskov Larsen på kontoret i Fuengirola

According to Sur Newspaper, two executives of the largest Danish bank, Danske Bank, have been ordered to appear before the Criminal Court 1 in Fuengirola to be deposed in relation to two charges of swindle and misleading publicity, brought by Euan Armstrong, a Briton who was sold an equity release mortgage.

 

The bank’s employees (Henrik Hjerrild Hansen -above left- and Morten Runo Waaben), currently working from the Luxembourg branch office,  are due to appear in Court on the 23rd of January and are to be questioned by the Judge and the claimant’s legal representatives, Lawbird Legal Services.

 

The Court ruling has also ordered the legal representatives for Danske Bank International S.A. to appear in Court, on the same day, in a capacity of ‘civilly responsible party’, inasmuch as corporations did not have criminal responsibility when the alleged fraud took place.

 

According to the writ filed by the claimant in 2011, Danske Bank convinced him in 2005 to mortgage his retirement home in Alhaurin El Grande (Málaga) to guarantee a loan that was directly invested in financial speculative investment transactions, in Luxembourg, without the capital ever coming to Spain. The financial product, called “Capital Assurance”, promised interesting tax benefits compliant with Spanish laws in respect to Inheritance and Wealth Taxes by reducing or eliminating the taxable value of the property, once the mortgage was registered against it.

 

According to Lawbird’s representative, Danske Bank even falsified the content of a tax report on the product prepared by KPMG, one of the largest professional services company, by interpreting its conclusions in an unlawful manner with the purpose of facilitating sales.

 

The news release points out that KPMG has deemed ‘false’ a statement made by Danske Bank in their promotional marketing whereby the former had approved the tax benefits, as well as a formal request by KPM to Danske Bank to cease the use of their name and the removal of any reference to them having given their blessing to the financial product.

 

The text makes reference to a recent ruling by the Spanish Tax Office that concluded that the so called Equity Release on Spanish property is not a valid scheme for lawful tax mitigation but tax fraud, and a criminal offence where the defrauded sum exceeds €120,000 per tax year.

 

An indictment has also been brought against Peter Staarup, former Danske Bank CEO, as head of the Danish company that is believed to have sold in Spain over 100 “Capital Assurance” Equity Release mortgage loans worth tens of millions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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