The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority claims to be looking at 250,000 Premier FX transaction records in an attempt to trace where over €10 million of clients’ funds were whisked away to before the company was shut down.
The company, owned and run by Peter Rexstrew, persuaded expats in Portugal and Algarve property owners living outside the country, to deposit cash with Premier FX on the promise of benefiting from exchange rate fluctuations and interest payments. Significant sums, often for house purchases, were left on deposit and a select few also were paid interest on deposits.
The company had no authorisation from the FCA, which was its regulator, to hold client funds – its licence covered only one off transfers of currency so the UK’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme did not apply when the shutters came down.
Andrew Bailey, the FCA’s chief executive, told MPs at a Treasury Select Committee on Tuesday, that “the first priority is to find the money,” explaining that “The person involved in this is said to be dead. I think it’s incumbent upon his relatives and business partners to tell us where the money is.”
This is the first time Bailey has allowed suspicion over Rexstrew’s death last June, to reach the media.
The founder of PremierFX was said to ‘have died on the operating table’ during surgery and a record of his death has been studied but the rumours that the finance expert had faked his own death and was lounging on a sun-kissed beach in the Caribbean, continue to make riveting copy.
Rexstrew’s children and former Managing Director, Nick Jones, have done themselves no favours by remaining silent over the events that wiped out people’s retirement plans when the business was shut down overnight and over €10 million was missing.
