The Spanish Land Registry has confirmed that a company owned by María Angeles Muñoz and husband Lars Broberg, Crasel Panoramica S.L., took out an Equity Release mortgage loan with Nordea Bank S.A., based in Centro Plaza, Marbella.
The mortgage loan capital was €3,100,000 against a property -used as collateral- valued at over 4,5 million Euros.
We cannot confirm whether Lars or María Angeles are keen golfers, the prototypical victims of Jesper Hertz, Nordea Representation Office Manager, but what we do know is that the property was purchased in 2001, and the mortgage loan signed in 2010 (maturing in 2020).
We also know that Nordea Bank S.A. has accurately explained, in a promotional brochure no longer available online since 15 days before the interim hearing in a case against them -for misleading publicity- (although cached by Google without Nordea IT ‘expert’ expecting it), how to go about the business of cheating the Spanish Tax Office.
These are some of the conclusions that must have convinced the Mayoress to buy this product:
Today’s investor is more likely to have amassed a fortune through personal effort.
This booklet has been devised as a basic guide for this new breed of investor and in particular for investors affected by Spanish tax and inheritance legislation.
Failure to take sufficient action of Spanish Inheritance Tax (which may be as high as 34%, or even above 80% in certain situations) in the wealth-planning process, may lead to an unexpected and financially unpleasant surprise for the heirs.
Fortunately, there are ways of mitigating both the wealth tax and the inheritance tax at the same time, one of which is to take up a mortgage.
Borrowers may take up a mortgage loan either at the time of the purchase of a Spanish property or after having owned the property for some time.
Clients appreciate our Nordic values – they differentiate us from our competitors.
Our Nordic values: integrity, impartiality, honesty, directness, flexibility, commitment, treating clients as individuals, we can make the difference.
(We are informed that the Somalian Bankers’ Association has announced a job vacancy for an expert on Nordea values…Jesper can you help?!)
It is suspected that they took out the Nordea flagship ‘international wealth and tax planning’ product , the Capital Managed Plan (CPM).
The Spanish Tax Office warned against using this product to reduce Wealth Tax and more significantly, Inheritance Tax.
The question is thereby one: victims or accomplices of a tax fraud scheme?
If the former, they should report the bank to the authorities and where not, we must conclude that they are suspects of a potential tax fraud situation.
Spare some sympathy for the María Angeles Muñoz the Mayoress of Marbella … she may have been overwhelmed by the prospect of becoming a beneficiary of “Nordic values” (as promised by the Nordea Bank) which allegedly entitle her to be treated as an individual with integrity, impartiality, honesty, directness, flexibility, commitment, and naive enough to believe this rot!
The Premier Group attempted to create a similar image when (illegally) hawking their spurious Low Risk Fund around Spain – and hundreds of elderly people believed them!
But where very large sums are seemingly involved in tax avoidance schemes, connotations of money laundering are sometimes not far behind. Although that is not the case here …
Isle of Man based Premier Group and an illegal Spanish Equity Release Scheme (SITIRS)
The Isle of Man based Premier Group Ltd illegally imported into Spain a financial stratagem named the Premier “Spanish Investment Transfer and Income Release Scheme” (SITIRS) a device which the Premier directors claimed was a means of mitigating or avoiding Spanish wealth and inheritance tax.
The Premier SITIRS required mortgage loans to be raised on pensioner’s debt free homes and thereby convert a visible asset (taxable under Spanish inheritance and wealth Tax) into a less visible financial vehicle based outside Spain and ostensibly outside the reach of the Spanish tax authority.
In reality the primary objective of Premier´s scheme was to inveigle new “investors” into the Premier Balanced and Optima 2 and 4 Funds.
In the course of launching their scheme Premier failed to ascertain with the Spanish Tax Office (La Hacienda) that the Premier SITIRS product was an approved legal means to avoid Spanish taxes. In fact La Hacienda views the Premier SITIRS product as constituting tax fraud with money laundering a juridical consequence. Premier also failed to obtain authorization from the Spanish regulator, the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV), to sell financial products in Spain – And failed to obtain from the Bank of Spain mandatory approval for the scheme´s promotion and operating protocols.
Premier´s SITIRS product was marketed with the help of Premier’s representative, the ubiquitous Charlie Wilson: and to assist in touting the scheme Premier engaged sales “agents” (initial commission 4% and a trail of 0.5%) who were not licenced or approved by the CNMV to sell financial products – some were even already on the CNMV blacklist!
Premier misled“clients” by claiming that the “asset backed” interest only loan, which is central to the Premier SITIRS strategy, was supported by Premier’s “capital guaranteed” investment Funds: a crucial claim as pensioner´s homes offered the only security to guarantee the loan.
Inevitably the Premier funds performed badly and proved incapable of providing sufficient revenue to support Premier´s misleading claims (see also the Premier Low Risk Fund) and some “investors” have now lost so much of their “guaranteed capital” that they are in real danger of losing possession of their previously debt free homes.
It is believed that approximately 200 tax evading Premier SITIRS contracts were issued to British pensioners resident in Spain – each contract estimated to have an average value of €450,000 representing a total sum exceeding €90 million, a figure of obvious interest to the Spanish tax authorities!
This appears to be another Premier boiler house type scam where the only people to profit are Premier´s directors, the carpet bagger “agents” and various cronies – whilst innocent pensioners, and the value of their property finance the entire subterfuge.
The matter remains under active investigation by law enforcement agencies, and financial services regulators, in several countries.
Justice for Pensioners
March 2014
Spare some sympathy for anyone who is conned by a silver tongued spiv wearing an imitation Armani suit a false smile all matching their equally fraudulent glossy sales brochures.
Highly plausible, but in reality criminally fake!
The Premier Shareholders Group numbers amongst its ranks many intelligent retired people including: architects, high ranking military officers and senior civil servants all highly accomplished in their own field of expertise but all with very little understanding of “financial products” or experience in “investment matters”.
Even these informed people were led to have faith in the crxp fed to them by bogus “financial advisor spivs” working closely with companies safely concealed in some wretched tax dodgers haven, such as Luxemburg or the Isle of Man, were the regulation of spurious financial products and those that peddle them is practically non-existent.
The whole business is made even more reprehensible by the fact that not only are the victims innocent people, but many of them are elderly and vulnerable