The Critical Fraud Workplace has at present secured the conviction at present of ex-IFA and funding supervisor David Kennedy for his position in a £100m funding fraud through which tons of misplaced a part of their life financial savings.
The conviction follows a re-trial at Southwark Crown Court docket.
Mr Kennedy, 71, and his enterprise companion, former solicitor Timothy Colleges, 63, managed a Cayman Island registered firm referred to as Axiom Authorized Finance Fund for over two years.
Mr Kennedy, of Tyne and Put on, can be sentenced on 8 Could.
The fund promised traders a safe return, providing loans to UK legislation companies that had been pursuing no-win-no-fee circumstances and the place there was “purportedly a excessive likelihood of success,” the SFO mentioned.
The Axiom Authorized Financing Fund raised over £100m from about 500 traders – a median of £200,000 per investor. Victims had been falsely promised a safe return on their cash.
As Monetary Planning Right now reported in 2022, as well as a variety of IFA companies had been hit by the collapse of the enterprise and an insurance coverage dealer enterprise failed.
In his sentencing remarks in 2022, Choose Martin Beddoe described Mr Colleges as “an totally dishonest man.”
Mr Colleges enterprise companion, Mr Kennedy, a former impartial monetary adviser, was discovered responsible of 1 depend of fraudulent buying and selling. Mr Colleges, a former solicitor, was jailed in August 2022 after being discovered responsible of three counts of fraudulent buying and selling, one depend of fraud, and one depend of transferring prison property. On the trial, the jury acquitted a 3rd defendant, Richard Emmett, on all prices.
Following the trial in 2022 Mr Colleges was sentenced to 14 years in jail for fraud. Throughout the case it was uncovered that Mr Kennedy used investor cash to fund 1000’s of excessive danger circumstances, that weren’t independently vetted and infrequently failed at court docket. Few traders ever acquired any return. The variety of purchasers whose circumstances had been affected by the fraud is within the vary of 35,000, the SFO mentioned.
The SFO additionally discovered that Mr Kennedy diverted over £5.8m from Axiom to pay for objects for his personal profit together with a Swiss ski resort chalet, a Tenerife villa and renovations to his house in Hull. Mr Colleges, from Penrith, Cumbria, used the cash to fund a luxurious life-style, Southwark Crown Court docket heard.
The 61-year-old ex-solicitor, who has since been struck off, was additionally reported to have had a ship, luxurious vehicles and a £5m fishing and capturing property within the Lake District.
Fund to offer the posh life-style had been hidden in offshore financial institution accounts and sophisticated trusts.
Nick Ephgrave, director of the Critical Fraud Workplace, mentioned, referring to Mr Kennedy: “This particular person’s prison actions flooded the authorized system with unwinnable circumstances affecting tons of of people that suffered monetary loss and important anxiousness because of this. This criminality additionally served to undermine belief and confidence within the authorized occupation extra broadly.
“Our specialist workforce used their experience to unpick a fancy path of funds, together with into Kennedy’s private accounts, to safe justice for victims at present.”
