The Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited has formally responded to Court papers filed by Equity Release Victims against this company and SLMB, their lenders.
The main allegations contained in the writ reveal a great deal of anxiety and worry, consistent with a very significant claim value of circa 6 million Euros.
In their defense, The Premier Group has avoided alluding to inheritance tax, lack of regulatory authorization to operate in Spain and financial miselling. Their main argument, aided by a partisan “independent” report drafted by their Isle of Man lawyers, CAINS, is that The Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited was incorporated in July 2007 and therefore, could have never had anything to do with the SITIRS (Spanish Inheritance Tax and Income Release Scheme) which, according to their independent lawyers, was devised and promoted by ‘another’ company called “Premier Balanced Distribution Inc”, based in British Virgin Islands, a revelation that logically exonerates them from any responsibility and thus…case closed!
Such is the confidence of The Premier Group’s Spanish counsel that they liberally dub lawyers acting for the claimants as clumsy and inept, considering the magnitude and implications of this gross oversight.
What these lawyers have not realized is that Mr. Michael Richardson (photo), the mastermind of this illicit tax-evasion mechanism, boasts the following on his website:
In 2001 founded the forerunner fund group that became Premier and has been actively engaged in the design and management of many offshore funds.
The extent of this legal bungle is corroborated by yet further admission that they are, in essence, the same company:
The Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited (“Premier”) is the successor of a fund group established in 2001 and is responsible for designing, distributing and managing a range of investment funds to investment intermediaries and financial institutions throughout the UK and international markets.
Further evidence that supports that both companies are the same will be produced in Court and, where appropriate, divulged in this website.
As for SLMH, they have not yet filed their defense papers that we are aware of.
John Bourbon (pictured above) worked for the Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission (before becoming a director of Premier) and was the prime architect of Isle of Man based “Experience Investor Funds” (EIFs) a genre of funds designed for professional, high net worth investors ONLY and a type of fund which deprives the public of their right to complain about alleged fraudulent sales ….
By registering their funds as EIFs Premier were able to employ a variety of highly questionable methods to cause elderly people, with little or no “investment experience”, to transfer their life savings directly into Premier´s EIF bank accounts… and because the pensioners had lost their right to “justice” Premier could obtain these bank transfers without fear of reprisals.
Note. Premier is based on the Isle of Man but have a number of companies registered in different places. But whatever the directors may claim it is ALWAYS the same people who are behind these “companies”.
The man pictured above is in fact the Premier director Michael Richardson …
This is the man who claimed in writing that the people employed by Premier to assist in promoting their experienced investor ONLY funds (and paid huge commissions to via Premier´s Caribbean registered shell companies including Premier Balanced Distribution Inc) were fully qualified professional financial advisors.
In fact they were unqualified, unregistered and unlicensed carpetbaggers assisting Premier to prey on unsuspecting pensioners by “selling” them totally inappropriate “investment funds”… but then not being entirely accurate with the truth is a peculiarity of Premier´s directors.
For more mug shots visit … http://www.thepremiergroup.biz/OurPeople.htm
When the Isle of Man Chief Minister, Allan Bell (then Treasury Minister), stood up in front of the Manx parliament to initiate legislation to withdraw “experienced investor funds” (EIFs) from retail sale he conveniently neglected to inform the parliament that hundreds of pensioners had fallen victim to the fraudulent distribution of Premier EIF funds… and to this day declines to acknowledge that Premier, an Isle of Man registered company, obtained bank transfers directly from pensioners in full knowledge that the pensioners were not “experienced investors” and therefore not qualified to invest in these funds.
If the Isle of Man Minister of the Treasury is accountable for the authorization and subsequent withdrawal (as in this case) of these types of “investment” funds then clearly he is also responsible for the injury inflicted on innocent members of the public when damaged by these funds. Particularly as Mr Bell was in possession of an extensive dossier informing him of how Premier had imported their EIF funds into Spain without licence, employed unlicensed individuals to help sell the funds to pensioners and blatantly operated outside the control of, and regard for, the Spanish financial regulators.
Which begs the questions:-
What other financial shenanigans are being concealed at the highest level on the Isle of Man, and how many more pensioners have had their lives devastated by Isle of Man based investment products?
All above supported with written documentation including the transcript/minutes of the Manx parliament.
Premier Group operate another dire fund – the “Premier Low Risk Fund plc”
This is anything but “low risk” and pensioners have lost much of their savings!
(As they have in the Premier Diversified Property Fund plc)
The Premier Shareholders Group complained to both the Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission and the (then) Minister of the Treasury, Mr Allan Bell, that Premier’s directors had misrepresented both the fund and the unqualified and unregulated “agents” who Premier paid large commissions (predictably via some inscrutable Caribbean shell company) but all to no avail.
Eventually questions were asked in the Manx parliament, see extract below….
HKA1405
HOUSE OF KEYS – ORDER PAPER
24th November 2009 10.00 am
1. QUESTIONS FOR ORAL ANSWER
10. The Hon Member for Michael (Mr Cannan) to ask the Minister for the Treasury – (Mr Allan Bell)
(a) Whether the Financial Supervision Commission is taking action to address the grievances of the Premier Shareholders Group in respect of the management of the Premier Low Risk Fund plc; and
(b) if he will make a full disclosure of the beneficial ownership of the Premier Low Risk Fund plc and the underlying financial problems?
The result?
The usual Isle of Man government response involving brushes and carpets!
Perhaps this time the Premier Group will be forced to provide answers …
Everyone should recognize that the “Premier Group” is as crafty as a sack full of monkeys ….
Whilst the “Premier Balanced Fund plc” is registered and domiciled on the Isle of Man the directors (and their lawyers) claim that the “fund” itself was “devised and promoted” by a completely different company named “Premier Balanced Distribution Inc” based in the British Virgin Islands.
The relationship between Premier’s Isle of Man registered plc and Premier’s secretive, British Virgin Island shell company (Premier Balanced Distribution Inc) is difficult to unravel as the shell company has no known directors or business activity (apart from devising dodgy investment schemes) and all that is presently known is that the shell company is designed to take responsibility for the activities of Premier´s Isle of Man registered ‘Public Limited Company (PLC) PLC being the legal designation of a company which offers shares to the general public, has limited liability and whose activities are extensively governed by Company Law.
To “shelter” themselves further Premier’s directors floated another company (July 2007) with the same directors and using a very similar trading name in an attempt to “pass-off” (or in their words “exonerate”) responsibility for the SITIRS scam launched in November 2005 onto the “old/original” company.
A completely new company can be “registered” (with the same directors) with just one letter different to an existing company and still remain totally distinct from the original – but only if used for legal purposes. Premier appear to have erased all evidence of the old “Premier Group plc” and an internet search only reveals the new company, “Premier Group (Isle of Man) Ltd”.
Perhaps Premier’s directors have failed to take into account that there is a large dossier of written, prima facie evidence assembled to expose ALL of their activities. And while the Isle of Man government and financial regulatory authorities sit back there is a lot more evidence to corroborate allegations of deception and misrepresentation, all now safely in the hands of various lawyers.
We also have a huge collection of Premier produced “literature” going back as far as 2001. This includes some “interesting” details about the original directors, two of whom disappeared quite rapidly!
Also Premier produced marketing brochures. Including those devised to promote “retail sales” and others produced as “training manuals” for Premier´s wretched assortment of totally unqualified and inept “agents” who Premier let loose with their fund products to target elderly people.
Copies of all these papers have been handed over to lawyers working on behalf of pensioners who lost their homes and savings in the expectation that they will be useful in any civil/criminal action against Premier’s directors.
All I know is that a lot of innocent pensioners LOST a whole heap of money in the Premier Balanced Fund, or whatever they are calling it today. Last I heard Premier, or whatever they are calling themselves today, it was so useless that they were winding it up as a dead loss!
Premier’s funds would appear to be designed for the financial benefit of Premier’s directors and the parasites who provide them with professional services, such as auditors, bankers and lawyers. Investors rarely profit from “investing” in a Premier Fund, they usually lose a hat full of money.
The Premier Group’s current trading title is totally irrelevant.
Both the former “Premier Group plc” and the later “Premier Group (Isle of Man) Ltd” gained financial advantage from the nefarious activities of Premier’s shadowy Caribbean registered shell companies – including Premier Balanced Distribution Inc registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Both Premier companies were/are registered in the Isle of Man and the same directors of both companies received bank transfers into company bank accounts knowing that they were from pensioners and obtained by methods which include, misrepresentation, misselling and deceit … For Premier to claim that the means for them to obtain these bank transfers were “ devised and promoted by another company” is something out of Alice in Wonderland.
RECEIVING/RETAINING BANK TRANSFERS OBTAINED BY DECEPTION IS A CRIMINAL OFFENCE
For further “proof” that the Premier Group promoted illegal tax avoidance products visit:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/4195059/How-to-make-Spanish-property-pay.html
(Copies of this Daily Telegraph article – dated Feb 2005 – now lodged with our lawyers)
Charles Walton, Premier’s sales manager in Spain was active in both promoting the Premier Group’s SITIRS (Spanish Inheritance Tax and Income Release Scheme) directly to the public and recruiting unqualified and unregistered “agents” to assist in this assignment. In other words the Premier Group participated directly in “retail sales” of what was shown to be an illegal product.
No wonder Premier’s directors have now changed the company’s trading title!
However Premier did have the courtesy to admit that there were “risks” involved in SITIRS as the investment portfolio (including the disastrous Premier Balanced Fund) may grow too slowly to produce enough funds to repay the loan… conveniently forgetting to add that as a result “investors” could lose their houses, but Premier would lose nothing! In fact the SITIRS scheme was simply a vehicle to raise capital for Premier’s investment funds which already had a history of poor performance.
PREMIER’S TIME TABLE TO DECEPTION
The Premier Balanced Fund plc (“The Fund”) was registered in the Isle of Man and launched in February 2004 as an “Experienced Investor Fund” (”EIF”) – a product ONLY available for corporate, institutional and high net worth investors.
At around the same time the Premier Balanced Fund Inc (“PBF”) was registered in the British Virgin Islands and was described as being the “promotor” of “The Fund”.
The “PBF” was tasked with owning management shares, devising “schemes” including the tax evasion scheme known as SITIRS, producing brochures to promote this scheme and appointing and paying “agents”… who were mostly unlicenced and unqualified spivs operating illegally.
With encouragement and direct marketing support from “The Funds” directors these spivs set about targeting elderly people with a totally inappropriate investment vehicle.
The Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited was incorporated in the Isle of Man on the 7th July 2007 and responsibilities of the “PBF” for “promoting” “The Fund” were transferred to this new company in March 2009.
The directors of “The Fund” include, John Charles Bourbon and Michael John Richardson.
The directors of the “PBF” include John Charles Bourbon and Michael John Richardson… but this may be difficult to prove due to the highly secretive nature of this company.
The directors of Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited include, John Charles Bourbon and Michael John Richardson.
Messrs Bourbon and Richardson now claim that they are not responsible for the activities of the “PBF”, (particularly in connection with the illegal Premier SITIRS scheme) and that this is entirely the responsibility of the “PBF” – which predictably has now disappeared from the face of the earth, along with the spivs who were recruited by the “PBF”.
And John Aspden’s useless Financial Supervision Commission allows all this to happen right under their noses!
The Isle of Man financial regulator:- The Financial Supervision Commission (“FSC”)
The FSC (previously led by J. Aspden and from the 1st November by Ms Karen Badgerow under a new acronym “IOMFSA”) may appear to be a slow-witted arrangement operated by statues enjoying salaries up to ”£150,000/year which couldn’t catch a cold – or predict the conduct of the Premier Group, the Louis Group and KPMG (amongst many others!)
But this assessment is not true because the FSC is neither “slow-witted” or “statuette” – more a carefully structured coterie tasked with protecting the reputation of the island’s financial services industry – a mission involving the concealment of wrong doings before they enter the public domain, – and for the few that escape this net making sure that they are swept under a carpet of calculated indifference, or those they don´t really care about choreographed in a PR exercise claiming that the FSC has saved civilisation.
The Isle of Man still sanctions a degree of secrecy about island registered companies and their beneficial ownership where less than savoury company activities can be hidden – while the more unpleasant undertakings are transferred to impenetrable Caribbean registered shell companies.
Indeed a former Chief Executive of the FSC (J.Bourbon) is now a senior director of several Isle of Man based investment companies (Premier) a group that transfer certain “responsibilities” to their Caribbean registered subsidiaries. All of this sanctioned by the FSC!
Put simply – the FSC is a very elaborate con job.
Latest news from the Isle of Man is that John Aspden, the recently retired head of the island’s Financial Supervision Commission (salary circa £250,000 per year) has been awarded the MBE for allegedly playing a role in “ensuring the island enhanced its reputation as a well-regulated finance centre”.
This is the same John Aspden who allowed the Isle of Man based Premier Group to obtain the life savings of hundreds of pensioners by claiming that their investment fund was “Low Risk” and that their “capital would be 100% secure”. All of the pensioners lost a large amount of money and when they complained to Mr. Aspden he said it was all their fault for believing Premier’s claims and refused to order Premier to return the pensioner’s life savings. … as did the island’s Chief Minister, Mr A. Bell, when the pensioners referred the matter to him.
Next the Premier Group claimed that their Premier “SITIRS” product was a legal tax avoidance “scheme” when in fact it was an illegal tax evasion scheme. Mr. Aspden (again in cohorts with Mr A. Bell) refused to take any action against the Premier Group and now some elderly people are in danger of losing their homes. As we all know this matter is now in the Spanish Courts (but not the Isle of Man Courts!).
Undoubtedly Mr. Aspden (with the assistance of Mr. A. Bell) played a significant role in enhancing the the island’s reputation as a very badly regulated finance centre, and a place where anybody seeking justice in matters pertaining to financial products can NOT expect to receive fair treatment from either the government or its regulatory bodies. Confirming yet again that the Isle of Man government and its feeble regulatory authorities are dishonest and can not be trusted.
Never bank or invest a penny on the Isle of Man until this corrupt government is removed.
MBE? For what? You really must be joking!
As the head of “investment product regulation” John Aspden initiated an era of what he named “Light Touch Regulation” which really meant “Do Whatever You Want And We Will Turn A Blind Eye To It.
Thankfully there are/were financial product companies registered in the Isle of Man with moral standards who ignored this “opportunity” and continued to deal appropriately with the public by refusing to lower their ethical standards.
But disastrously for thousands of pensioners there were those companies, the Premier Group being one, who resorted to lying and cheating to obtain bank transfers totalling £millions. And true to the ethos enshrined in his “Light Touch Regulation” John Aspden allowed this aberration to continue throughout his tenureship as head of Isle of Man Financial Product Regulatory Commission.
The pensioner victims formed several “action groups” to bring this matter, obtaining bank transfers by deception a criminal offence, to the attention of the Chief Minister Mr Allan Bell, many members of the Tynwald and Isle of Man consumer protection offices. All complaints were rejected.
Some of these offences occurred fifteen years ago, but the pensioners still campaign in the hope that one day legality will be restored to the island and the victims compensated.
MBE? For what? You really must be joking!