‘Dubai’ diamond firm wound up
THE Insolvency Service has scored a major High Court victory over a rip-off diamond dealer who claimed British consumer protection officials could not touch him because his company was registered offshore in Dubai.
David Ramsey, 40, from Slough in Berkshire, set up Diffraction Diamonds in the Gulf to supply fancy coloured gemstones to boiler-room sales outfits in Britain that used false claims to sell the diamonds to ordinary investors.
He used bogus valuation certificates from a separate company, IGL Labs UK Limited, based near Hatton Garden in London. The certificates showed investors were getting a bargain, but Insolvency Service investigators found that IGL Labs UK had never even seen the gems and simply added 20 per cent to whatever price investors were charged.
By the time diamonds had passed from a legitimate dealer, to Diffraction and then through the hands of salesmen, investors faced a mark-up of as much as 745 per cent. The court ruled this meant investors would ‘almost inevitably suffer loss’.
Although Diffraction was registered abroad, its sales into Britain and its role in cheating investors were significant enough for the court to order it to be wound up in the public interest. IGL Labs UK, run by 40-year-old Noam Lenzini, of Barnet in North London, was also shut down by the court.
I warned against David Ramsey and Diffraction Diamonds in March last year and three weeks ago I reported Ramsey had been banned from acting as the director of any British company for the next 14 years after he admitted running a scam carbon credits investment firm that went into liquidation in 2014.