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THE Financial Conduct Authority has brought bankruptcy proceedings against three investment crooks who have failed to obey a court order to hand back a total of £3.62 million to their victims.
Lee Skinner, Tyrone Miller and Clive Mongelard were behind Our Price Records, which marketed shares illegally, with false claims and with no authorisation from the FCA. It won a court order against them in May last year but they have not handed over a single penny of their criminal proceeds. A fourth defendant, Karen Ferreira, has appealed against her bankruptcy order.
After last year’s High Court hearing, FCA enforcement head Mark Steward advised investors to avoid unauthorised advisers, saying, ‘These businesses are breaking the law’. But bizarrely, Miller and Mongelard both have backgrounds in the financial sector and still appear on the FCA’s public register of advisers, with notes saying simply that t hey no l onger need FCA approval, and that they have faced no FCA disciplinary or regulatory action.
Do the Treasury-appointed directors of the FCA not realise how ridiculous this makes them appear?
This particularly applies in the case of Clive Mongelard, alias Clive Harris, John Harris, Chris Harris and Clive Lindsay. Six years ago, I wrote that, ‘Clive Harris Mongelard is a living, breathing example of what is wrong with investor protection in Britain, and what is needed to put things right.’ Mongelard was a salesman with three rip-off stockbroking firms that closed down after being caught selling high-risk shares to low-risk clients. He then moved on to work for a scam land investment company that cheated 300 investors out of more than £14 million. And six years ago he was cheating investors in so-called ‘rare earth metals’.
Despite all this, he has claimed to be one of the City’s most respected stockbrokers. He has certainly made monkeys out of the FCA’s bosses, who condemn him as a lawbreaker in one breath, yet at the same time tell the public he has no disciplinary record. I asked the FCA why it failed to prosecute Mongelard and his pals, but the watchdog refused to comment.