Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/694236
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 19 JUNE 2016 17 licit purposes", traded between in- termediaries and call centres. This part of the story starts in 2012 when the SPA started receiv- ing complaints from savers who said an insurance intermediary, Positiv Pension, had transferred their funds from Insider Fonda without their consent into another pension fund, PP Aktiv. A crimi- nal investigation was launched but never concluded. When Positiv went into bank- ruptcy in August 2013, it was sold to American company ABS Invest- ment Group, the owner of fund manager Optimus Fonder, which ran the fund Optimus High Yield. Positiv's customer register, which included the PIN codes to access savers' pension accounts, was transferred to another insurance intermediary called Strategi Plac- ering – a subsidiary of Solid Eq- uity Nordic, on whose board Emil Ingmanson sat between 2012 and 2014. All of a sudden in the summer of 2013, approximately 21,000 pen- sion savers found that their monies had been moved to Optimus High Yield without their knowledge. A call centre company, Astartes, was responsible for carrying out the transfers. Ingmanson was a board member on Astartes too, between 2012 and 2013. The Swedish Pensions Agency took action, alerting pension sav- ers of the transfer of their pensions to Optimus High Yield. Savers followed suit and demanded they leave Optimus. Savers dwindled from 32,000 to 12,3000 in March 2015, which is when Optimus de- cided to merge with one of Falcon Funds' sub-funds. Even here, the SPA suspects that Ingmanson facilitated the merger, through his contacts with Falcon Funds as well as ABS Investment Group. The result was that 12,000 pension savers and €127 million in savings were added to Falcon Funds. But Tonio Fenech says that if the SPA had evidence that these other funds had used illegal means to ob- tain savers' money, "why did they not act against them? Why did they allow Falcon Funds to merge with Optimus in March 2015? Why did they not then alert us of this con- cern? Clearly as directors of Falcon Funds we cannot be asked to carry the responsibilities of actions per- formed by these other funds." Additionally, there are serious allegations that the call-centre Konsumentkraft carried out at least 1,971 suspect ID takeovers and used fraudulent sales tactics to tell Swedish pension savers to put their monies in Falcon Funds between January 2015 and Febru- ary 2016. "Konsumentkraft's employees il- legally gained access to individual pension savers' accounts through electronic IDs, sometimes by pre- senting themselves as representa- tives of the Agency, and trans- ferred their pension capital to the Falcon Funds' funds." Falcon Funds has defended itself, saying that it was its Swedish pay- ing agent, Stellum, which engaged Konsumentkraft between July and September 2015, before terminat- ing the agreement. But the SPA says that the Kon- sumentkraft transfers continued well into 2016, when the agency finally stopped the transfers by suspending Falcon Funds. "Falcon has been unable to explain why the sub-funds, despite Stellum's claims that the agreement with Konsu- mentkraft had been terminated in September 2015, continued to receive larger amounts of capital from fund changes carried out by Konsumentkraft." Konsumentkraft is now being investigated by the Swedish po- lice, and its permission to act as an insurance intermediary has been withdrawn by the Swedish Finan- cial Services Authority. Its name has now changed to Hic Salta. Even here, Ingmanson lurks in the background: the SPA says that Konsumentkraft's board members were changed with straw-men who had also been on the Strategi Placering board. Fenech here insists Falcon Funds cannot be held responsible for the actions of Swedish-licenced entity that was sub-contracted by Stel- lum. "It is not uncommon that some companies come to claim the commission retroactively after proving their success in selling our funds. The use of misselling meth- ods cannot be attributed to us and it was the entity licensing the com- pany that carries the responsibili- ties for allowing it for months to act in such a manner. "From our information the only action taken to date on this entity was that the consumer agency for- mally asked it to remedy its selling action within two weeks. The only proof presented in the letter for the wrong doing of Konsument- kraft was the interview in TV4's 'Cold Facts', when they said they had recordings that they never presented. As a minimum I would have expected that they would have referred to as prove of evi- dence." Ingmanson's latest moves Ingmanson has had several Maltese addresses, and it is clear that he is known to the people at Temple Asset Management, Fal- con Funds, and the directors that appear on Falcon Asset Manage- ment, like Tonio Depasquale, the former Bank of Valletta chief ex- ecutive. The decisions as to which shares and stocks Falcon Funds in- vests savers' monies in are taken by Temple Asset Management, which is run by John Farrell in Flo- riana where Falcon Asset Manage- ment is also registered. As emails from Temple show, Falcon Asset Management – of which Ingmanson is its ultimate beneficial owner – is planning to become the manager for Falcon Funds' underlying funds. Com- pany documents show that in February 2016, Ingmanson trans- ferred his one share in Falcon As- set Management, to Falcon Asset Holdings; and his sole share in Falcon Asset Holdings was then transferred to London firm Com- ino Holding LLP, which is in turn owned by two companies in the Isle of Man – Falcon Gozo and Falcon Comino. The ultimate beneficial owners of these two companies are hidden behind nominees. News Banif Bank's team of professional bankers is committed to supporting commercial customers grow and prosper. Whether I'm heading a start-up or a global venture, I can rely on Banif Bank to be a trusted partner in my journey. 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