Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/785757
9 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 12 FEBRUARY 2017 News Court stops Swedish businessman in pension bust from selling Sliema property MATTHEW AGIUS THE Maltese pension fund struck off from Sweden's private pen- sion platform, has been granted an injunction by a Maltese court that stops a Swedish businessman from transferring a Sliema sea- front property. Falcon Funds, whose direc- tors include Nationalist MP and former finance minister Tonio Fenech, ran a pension fund on the Swedish pension market before it was deregistered over suspicions of misselling. It has since been re- ported to the Swedish police on a complaint of suspected fraud. In court, Falcon Funds said that it had engaged the Maltese firm Temple Asset Management as its investment manager. But it alleged that TAM had invested over €10 million of savers' cash in financial instruments owned by Swedish businessman Emil Amir Ingmanson, in what turned out to be an 'advance' for his London company. After filing a case against Ing- manson, Falcon Funds also filed proceedings against TAM and In- gmanson over what were termed as "irregularities" in the funds. Falcon Funds demanded a war- rant of prohibitory injunction against Ingmanson to prevent him from disposing of a penthouse and two one-car garage spaces in Sliema, as these could be used to recover the monies it had alleg- edly lost, should a separate court case over those monies be upheld. Mr Justice Lawrence Mintoff was told that Ingmanson had proposed certain investments to TAM, in which he had an undis- closed financial interest. The in- vestment in question was in Solid Venture Capital Ltd, registered in the UK, which had itself invested in another company that had gone bankrupt, suffering a €2,707,216 loss in the process. Falcon Funds filed for the in- junction to safeguard the interests of pension clients, demanding compensation both from TAM and Ingmanson. Ingmanson, they said, had a con- flict of interest and had acted in bad faith to promote his interests at the expense of those of Falcon Funds. The court said it could not evaluate the merits of the case at hand, or whether Temple's man- agers were aware of Ingmanson's actions or had colluded with him. Neither could it determine whether Ingmanson had any in- fluence on Temple's decisions or whether Falcon's directors could have known that Ingmanson was involved in the suspect financial instrument 'Solid Venture P2P. A June 2016 email exchange ex- hibited in court showed Ingman- son in conversation with a Solid Venture Capital employee, and with Temple's director Anthony Farrell. "At prima facie level, the factual link between the plain- tiffs and the defendant has been proven... they had a working rela- tionship founded on a rapport of mutual trust and based on the be- lief that Ingmanson, in his various roles... had been acting only by the best interests of the defendants and nothing else." The court granted the injunc- tion, holding that the requisites for its issue had been "satisfied in full" and noted that the evidence had not been contradicted or con- tested by the defendant, who had chosen not to testify under oath in these proceedings. it's off-fish-ial and vet office set for approval Emil Ingmanson