At last, there is news for clients of Premier FX, the Almancil-based foreign exchange company that abruptly closed its doors in late July, freezing its customers’ funds and failing to communicate - beyond a brief message on its website, apologising “for any inconvenience that this may cause.”
On 13 August, 2018, on the application of the FCA, the High Court made an Administration Order in respect of Premier FX Ltd.
The company officially has been in administration as from 11.07am this morning.
The founder of the company, Peter Rextrew, died on June 16th of this year, leaving staff and managers in shock.
Rextrew’s two children, Katy Joanna Grogan and Charles Peter Rextrew, became Directors of the company on June 18th and clients were assured the business was to continue as before, under the managing directorship of Nick Jones.
A notice was sent to all loyal customers that the company was in rude good health but on July 20th the business closed down, shutting clients out of their online accounts and preventing them from initiating transfers. The company's claim to have been 'covered by the FSA' was not correct and Premier FX certainly was not licenced to hold the size of deposits that its customers now are claiming.
This situation has been the norm ever since, until this morning’s announcement, conveyed to the Premier FX Victims’ Facebook account by Jeremy Boyle at Summit Law LLP whose specialist legal services company already has taken instruction from several deeply distressed Algarve residents.
The next stage is that a firm of licensed insolvency practitioners analyse the company, interview staff and Directors and see what funds remain. It will be interesting to see if anyone is able to contact the Directors who have made it their business to remain uncontactable.
Whether Barclays, the company's principal bank, has opened a fraud investigation into the 'situation' remains to be confirmed but in a scenario where the lack of information has been the desired goal, the Rextrew children have a lot of explaining to do, not least to the UK authorities.
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For a Sky News report, click HERE