WE'RE WATCHING YOU
A WINE investment company that accused me of running a smear campaign against it has been wound up by the High Court in Manchester after an investigation by the Government’s Insolvency Service.
London-based APW Asset Management – previously named Australian Portfolio Wines – marketed wine from Down Under with the claim that it would be held in a safe bonded warehouse in Britain while it rose in value.
But investigators found the wine in store is at least 19,482 bottles short of the number bought by investors. The company also owes an estimated £600,000 to customers whose wine it sold on to new investors.
According to evidence given to the court, APW clients who tried to turn their wine back into cash suffered an average loss of 44 per cent. Investigator Colin Cronin said: ‘The company then cynically sold this same wine to new clients at a considerable profit for itself.’ The average mark-up by APW was more than 81 per cent.
In January, I warned that APW was linked to Enzo Giannotta, formerly a salesman at a different wine scam company that was wound up in 2003. I also linked it to Spencer Pibworth, who has featured in numerous telemarketing scams.
The director of APW, Chima Maduabuchukwu, said at the time that I was out to discredit his business. But the official investigation since then suggests that he was nothing more than a paid front man who was unable to say who really owned the company. Whoever is behind APW, there have been no prosecutions and those responsible have been allowed to keep the money they took from investors.