Missing accounts could see loan firm shut down
THE British arm of controversial international loan company Privilege Wealth is facing action by Companies House officials over its failure to file accounts.
The business was set up in 2015 and its first year’s accounts were legally due by April 12. Failing to produce the accounts is an offence that could lead to the company being struck off and dissolved.
The Mail on Sunday revealed last week that the boss of Privilege Wealth’s call centre in Panama had been shot and wounded in what police are treating as a targeted murder attempt.
Christopher Rafal Burton, 45, from Nottingham, was in a car in Panama City when attackers on a motorbike fired around a dozen shots, three of which hit him. In 2008 and 2009, I named Burton as the man behind a massive fraud involving the sale by a ‘boiler room’ in Spain of shares in Tycon Energy, which was said to be a Nevada oil prospecting company. Police in Panama are now holding Burton for extradition to Spain.
Privilege Wealth is a complex web of companies spread over a dozen countries that claims to offer high returns to investors by lending out their cash as payday loans.
Miami-based investigator David Marchant, who runs anti-fraud organisation Offshore Alert, has reported that the Panama call centre’s 200 staff were not paid and that investment redemptions were suspended.
In Britain, Privilege Wealth has been promoted by Londonbased Anafin Capital, which is said to have raised several million pounds. Anafin, which is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, recently fell out with Privilege Wealth after it asked unsuccessfully to see the loan group’s financial records.
Anafin then won a court order in Gibraltar for the production of the records, but it declined to say whether it was now satisfied with the safety of the scheme.
I warned last October that one of those behind Privilege Wealth is Brett Jolly, a British businessman living in Marbella. He has previously been linked to Anglo-Capital Partners, a scam carbon credits investment firm, and Green Planet Investment, which was closed down by the High Court after it used false claims to raise £14million for a leisure development in Brazil that was never built.
In a statement provided by his London lawyers, Jolly distanced himself from Privilege Wealth, saying: ‘I have not invested in, or raised money for Privilege Wealth for well over six months now.’
He added: ‘I am not subject to either UK or Gibraltarian law as I neither live nor trade in either of those jurisdictions.’