Dubai forex scheme chief is held again

Sydney Lemos, head of $300m Exential scheme, back in police hands as second company comes under investigation

DUBAI // The man behind the US$300 million Exential foreign- exchange scheme has been arrested for a second time.

And investigators are now looking into another forex scheme believed to have snared thousands of Emirates crew.

Sydney Lemos, who investors claim led the Exential operation run from Media City, has been arrested again and is in police custody, lawyers say.

Mr Lemos is accused of leading a team of sellers promising 120 per cent returns on US$20,000 accounts. The bogus scheme was shut down by the Department of Economic Development last year.

He was arrested on December 21 last year and out on bail when rearrested in the past few days.

Private investigators at UK firm Carlton Huxley are working on behalf of 30 clients, most of whom are Emirates cabin crew, claim another fund could have more victims.

UTMarkets is a UK-run website with offices in Bulgaria, offering investors the chance to trade forex and other commodities.

“Our lead investigators have established that some people involved in Exential may also be connected with UTMarkets,” said John Rynne, a director of Carlton Huxley.

“Carlton Huxley has been retained by clients to look into the conduct of those involved in UTMarkets.” The UTMarkets site makes similar profit promises to those of Exential, which left thousands devastated by debt.

Fraud investigators said the UTMarkets scheme developed quickly through recommendations among airline workers in late 2015 and early last year as Exential started to collapse.

“We have grounds to believe there are about 6,000 UTMarkets victims, 95 per cent of whom work for Emirates airline,” said one of the UK investigators.

“We are keeping the legal department of Emirates informed and have identified people who appear to have been actively involved with Exential who are also involved in UTMarkets.”

UTMarkets account managers were approached for comment but none responded.

Asif, an Emirates ground crew worker from India who has been in Dubai for 11 years, borrowed about Dh110,000 to invest in UTMarkets in January last year. He earns Dh15,000 a month. He was paid about Dh7,000 a month for five months but was encouraged to reinvest most of that by employees working from Sofia, Bulgaria.

“I had heard of Exential for years but had not invested,” he said. “I was hoping to plan for my future with my wife and heard Exential account holders were having problems, so I invested with UTMarkets instead.

“They were offering almost twice as much in monthly returns. My friends and colleagues persuaded me that UTMarkets was a better investment.”

He claims many who lost out through Exential ploughed more money from loans and credit cards into UTMarkets to try to recover their initial deposits.

Asif said he was owed about Dh84,500 from UTMarkets. “The conversation with UTMarkets stopped when they stopped paying out each month. The account managers have all now disappeared.”

‘ We have grounds to believe there are about 6,000 UTMarkets victims One of the UK investigators