Profiting from misery
Government adviser, call centre chief and pension scheme director stand accused of...
A GOVERNMENT pensions adviser was involved in five rogue retirement schemes that destroyed hundreds of lives, the Mail can reveal. victims accused Stephen Ward of ‘making millions from other people’s misery.’
The 64-year-old father of two lives with his wife Carol in a Costa Blanca villa with pool and views of the Mediterranean. He also boasts on Facebook of a £1million Florida real estate empire and further properties in Spain.
Meanwhile victims of the pension schemes he helped promote and administer fear losing their homes and spending their old age in poverty after losing their nest eggs because they trusted the ‘reckless’ financial adviser. Many also face huge tax bills after he encouraged them to sign up to schemes that broke HMRC laws.
Mr Ward was an introducer and promoter of one of the Ark schemes, one of the first pension liberation scams in 2010-11. He was later involved in transferring victims’ funds to the Capita Oak and Westminster schemes in which hundreds of people lost millions of pounds.
He went on to become a trustee of the bogus London Quantum scheme.
More than 90 workers invested £6million in retirement funds in London Quantum and most lost the lot. Mr Ward was banned from being a pension scheme trustee two years ago after the regulator ruled he was behind a ‘series of extremely serious failings’ and showed a ‘lack of integrity’ by putting London Quantum pension funds into high risk investments which bore ‘all the hallmarks of being scams’.
Members, most of whom have lost all their cash, believed they were transferring their nest eggs into low or medium risk investments when they joined the scheme. Instead, their money went into Brazilian eucalyptus farms, hotel rooms in Cape verde and car park bays in Dubai.
In a damning ruling, the Pensions Regulator said: ‘Mr Ward’s conduct was reckless in all the circumstances, and amounted to turning a blind eye to a significant issue and failing to ask obvious questions.
‘It is difficult to believe that Mr Ward was unaware of the risks that his actions and failings posed to members and the likelihood that they breached the requirements of pensions legislation.’ Mr Ward had previously boasted to the financial press that his scheme was ‘completely above board’, stressing that it was registered with HMRC.
Incredibly, his disastrous role in the London Quantum scheme came at around the same time that he was an adviser on the 2014/15 Taxation of Pensions Bill, having previously been a Government expert on other financial matters.
Mr Ward also wrote the Tolley’s Pension Taxation manual – described as the bible of the pensions industry – for 2015/16 and 2016/17 and contributed to pension textbooks for the Institute of Financial Services.
This is despite him having previously been involved in four other retirement schemes in which members lost all their savings. In 2010/11 he made £350,000 in fees after introducing 176 members to the Ark scheme, which was later ruled by a judge to be illegal and a ‘fraud on the trustees’ powers’.
Mr Ward was not a trustee of the scheme but hosted seminars promoting Ark around the UK, including Surrey golf clubs where he assured attendees there were no tax liabilities on pension schemes.
In fact most victims not only lost all their cash but are now facing tax bills because the scheme broke tax laws.
Sue Flood has endured years of hell after she and her partner lost £125,000 having trusted Mr Ward’s advice on the Ark scheme.
Mrs Flood is also facing a potential £60,000 bill.
She said: ‘He made a big thing about being a Government pensions adviser.
‘If the Government listens to them why the hell shouldn’t I? But I am the one facing a huge tax bill from the Government after being cleaned out because I trusted a Government adviser. Where is the justice in that?’ He denied any wrongdoing, however, and the Pensions Regulator later ruled that there was ‘not sufficient evidence of Mr Ward having actual knowledge of, or turning a blind eye to, the illegal nature of the activity of the Ark Schemes’.
It also did not find a lack of honesty or integrity on this issue.
But it added: ‘Mr Ward ought to have gained knowledge and experience from a close involvement with a pension scheme that was found to be a vehicle for pension liberation and had such grave consequences for members.’
But in 2012 his company arranged transfers to two other pension liberation schemes, according to documents obtained by the Mail from victims who lost their savings in the schemes.
Premier Pension Transfers, for which Mr Ward was the registered secretary, director and sole shareholder, was named in letters administering the transfer of funds to the Capita Oak pension scheme, including those who lost their cash in the rogue scheme now being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. It also appears on letters organising the transfer of pension funds to the Westminster scheme, which an Insolvency Service investigation later found in 2016 had misled the 79 members who invested more than £3.3million.
Mr Ward also advised savers and helped some of the transfers into the now defunct Continental Wealth Management scheme in which hundreds of people lost up to £25million after putting their money into high-risk investments that paid huge commissions. A police officer whose £112,077 pension disappeared in the London Quantum scheme said: ‘It’s very frustrating that it was allowed to happen time after time, especially by someone advising the Government on pensions.
‘It was very glossy brochures and HMRC regulated, so from the point of view of the man on the street you assume you’re quite safe.’
The officer, who does not want to be named because he is still serving, is the only individual known to have won an ombudsman’s appeal
‘Series of extremely serious failings’
against his pension provider for agreeing to the transfer.
He has had his money reinstated. He added: ‘I know many others, including other officers, who have lost it all and are suffering terribly. It does seem unjust that their futures have been torn apart by this while the people behind it have been able carry on for such a long time with very little real action being taken against them.’
Mr Ward did not respond for request to comments.