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May 2017
Forex creditors urge SFO investigation Creditors owed money from failed Forex Brokers Limited have walked away from their first meeting with liquidators still no wiser as to how Forex lost $16 million of their funds.
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utofile understands that a number of the 120-plus creditors hit by the Forex collapse are dealers operating in the Hamilton region. One Hamilton dealer, who lost $500,000 when Forex went into liquidation on April 10, says the information they were given by liquidators PKF Corporate Recovery & Insolvency during the May 10 meeting in Auckland was “pretty much what we have heard from the start. We are no better off”. “There is no money. There’s no hope at the moment. There’s probably not enough money to pay the liquidators,” he says. The man, who only wants to be known as Darryn, says about 30 creditors at the Auckland meeting have agreed to retain PKF as the official liquidators and for it to continue to investigate Forex and perhaps discover where the money has gone and what went wrong. But he says the investigation could take six to 18 months. Darryn, who is one of five
creditors on the newly formed Forex creditors’ committee, says he wants to encourage everyone affected by the collapse of Forex to lodge a complaint with the Serious Fraud Office.
“I didn’t learn anything new at the creditors meeting. I don’t think we are going to get our money back.” -
Robert Heaphy, investor
“There have already been five official complaints to the SFO. I do hope that (the SFO) looks in to it and then there could be legal ramifications,” he says. He believes Forex may have paid out failed investments with new money. Darryn says the liquidators have put a legal hold on two properties, which are worth about $2.5 million,
associated with Forex director Russell Maher. But the properties, a family home in Auckland and an investment property in Hasting, are held in trusts. “There were no true answers from the meeting. Do you keep throwing money at it to pay the liquidators?” Darryn says he initially invested $300,000 on the foreign exchange with Forex during 2015. “We were sucked into that thinking it was a good thing. We got regular buy and sell sheets,” he says. The dealer then invested another $200k. He says about a month before Forex went in to liquidation, he asked for some of his money back but was told it was in overseas investments and he could lose money if he cashed it in. “Then it was 10 days later that I got a notice about the liquidation. I am about the thirteenth biggest creditor. It is very disappointing as I haven’t done anything wrong,” the trader says. “But the money can’t just
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