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THERE is disastrous news for investors in the collapsed Bordeaux Wine Company (BWC), who have been told by the Administrator that they are likely to recover less than a penny for every £1 they poured into what were supposed to be profitable wines.
Insolvency Practitioner U man gP at el, who was appointed Administrator by the High Court last September, has written to the company’s clients to say he has received claims totalling more than £10 million, and he expects this figure to rise as many investors have not yet filed a claim.
Investigations at a bonded warehouse used by the company have shown a massive shortfall of cases of wine which investors had paid for, but which BWC had not actually bought from vineyards.
One investor said: ‘The end result is that unsecured creditors are likely to get 0.6p in the pound.’ As a result, this investor only stands to get about £340 in place of £57,000 he invested.
Even this figure is only likely because the Administrator found that last July and August, BWC sold much of the wine it had stored but banked payments of £584,380 in the account of a completely different company, controlled by BWC’s director Boington Grant.
The Administrator won a court order to freeze the account, and has seized £52,538, and is pursuing the balance. Last year, I recovered £27,000 for one investor but warned that the company was likely to collapse very soon. And I named its behind-the-scenes controller as Freddie Achom, a convicted fraudster with a history of wine scams who had reinvented himself as a successful businessman, being pictured at official receptions hosted by then Prime Minister David Cameron and the Duchess of Cornwall.