Jyske Bank has been targeted by a Danish TV company in respect to advice on how to defraud the Danish Tax Office.

The programme, largely filmed with a hidden camera, shows how Jyske uses the Gibraltar and Swiss branches to conduct illegal activities, described as “disgusting” by the Danish Tax Minister.

El Confidencial newspaper, who a while ago published an article that was inspired partly on an ERVA posting, is again sniping at Jyske Bank.

Great job by Niels Fastrup!

Sydbank has always denied having collaborated with Nykredit on distributing a tax evasion product from Switzerland and Marbella, and Nykredit has always said that “they were only the lenders” and had no association whatsoever with Sydbank, other than the happy coincidence that British retirees happily living on the Costa del Sol introduced them to each other.

As compulsive-lying Nykredit henchman Frederik Meding put it, Nykredit Realkredit A/S only provided the mortgage which your clients chose to use for investment.

Or more appropriately, Morten Larsen and Kennet Nissen, from Sydbank in Aabenraa stated, the bank has not been involved in Nykredit A/S mortgaging of your clients’ properties and Nykredit has not been involved in the investment advice provided by the bank to your clients.

Furthermore, Frederik (who shokingly has not yet been sacked for allowing his firm to operate jointly with a clandestine firm, in Spain) added, as if to show his firm grip on all law matters whether EU/Danish/Spanish-you-name-it, that it is important for me to state that Nykredit is not a party to or otherwise involved in the investment service provided to you by Sydbank AG. Hence Nykredit is not in a joint venture or other kind of partnership with Sydbank AG. 

It is at this point where one wonders whether lying is endemic to bankers or, more particularly, Danish bankers.

The article, currently posted on Sydbanks’ website, states completely the opposite. Who is therefore lying? Sydbank or Sydbank, Nykredit or Nykredit?

Mr. Mogens Asmund, a Dane that seems to tell the truth, states the following:

Sydbank has developed mortgage offer in cooperation with Nykredit.

 

 

In Nykredit we look forward to expanding the cooperation with Sydbank financing solutions to private clients in Germany.

 

Based on experience with the financing of private homes in France and Spain, we can now offer our Nykredit Danish Mortgage to Danish and German Sydbank customers, says deputy director Erik Urskov, from Nykredit.

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”
― Abraham Lincoln

The title of this post should make us ask the following question: what would happen in Spain if Nordea lost it’s Danish license? Probably not much in Spain because Jesper Hertz, the insatiable Nordea Bank S.A. Marbella-based employee, has signed over 200 Spanish Tax Office cheating mortgages on Spanish property and he intends that all loans are repaid back and where not, properties are reclaimed through the Courts.

He is a man on a mission!

ERVA is looking for witnesses that can testify that these two ladies, Pernille Bering and Maria Tremurici-Falter, attended a meeting at a hotel with an unsuspecting victim with a view to explain, in a matter of just over an hour, the advantages of a 2.5 million Strategic Allocation Product Equity Release to a German pensioner.

This product was the brainchild of some pen-pushing Finansbanken nerd whose credibility was established, prima facie, by the business suit he wore.

As it happened, the nerd was only interested in his salary, Pernille flew to Spain exclusively to sell an unregulated 2.5 million Euros financial product in a record time of an hour, the Strategic Asset Allocation fiasco, and Maria Tremurici, a Kristina Szekely wannabe, was dragged in to finally convince the German speaking customers of the beauties of this great Danish tax-evasion product.

Finansbanken, now infamous Jyske Bank, is soon to expand its Costa del Sol property porfolio once they commence repossession proceedings.

Following a recent visit by Euan A. lawyers to the Criminal Court 1 in Fuengirola, it has been established that Danske Bank Luxembourg is now to be finally deposed via the European Judicial Network in criminal matters (EJN), in Luxembourg.

Danske Bank lawyers have been persistent in attempting to avoid, at all cost, the interrogation of the defendant parties. The tactics have so far been unsuccessful save for achieving a delay of a few months; the implications, however, could be expensive to its perpetrators for Court officials are of the opinion that there is a clearly defined strategy to maliciously prevent the normal progress of the proceedings and hamper the efforts of the claimant to obtain, via the Spanish Courts, a defendant’s statement within a criminal case.

Notably, Danske Bank insists that this is a purely civil dispute that should be conveniently ventilated by Civil Courts and yet, cannot and willl not explain why is their publicity false, fraudulent and proposes tax evasion openly. Surely, if they had nothing to worry about they would sooner be giving a clarifying statement than hiding behind slow EU cross-border plaintiff interrogation mechanisms.

Finally, it is worth noting that  the claimant’s counsel has indicated that both Mr. Morten Runo Waaben and Mr. Henrik Hjerrild Hansen should be deposed via the appropriate channels but that, if they felt a compelling desire to come out clean they could, through their advisors, request an appointment with the Fuengirola Court to give their statements.

Nykredit’s lawyers maintain that, in respect of the Spanish Equity Release Product offered by their Marbella office in conjunction with Sydbank, the biggest offending bank ever to come to Spain (opened an office yet had not informed the Bank of Spain, or the Central Bank of Denmark, for that matter), both banks offered two separate services. We disagree with the first statement, for obvious reasons, but coincide in that they were 2 services: one consisted on predatory lending and the second, on mis-investing hundreds of thousand of Euros (or stealing them as nobody knows where the money went).

According to them, it was David Driver who duly put them in touch and ever since, they got on famously.

Well, it now appears that Karen Frosig, CEO for Sydbank, is also on the board of directors of Nykredit.

The Premier Balanced Fund was described as an “experienced investor fund”, restricting it to people capable of understanding the risks, but they needed a lender who could come up with 40 million Euros to invest in their fund.

SLM Funding Nº1 Limited won the tender process: it was selected by the Premier Group (Isle of Man) Ltd. to find those 40 million Euros, an order they carried out efficiently: Aareal Bank was convinced to pool resources, some say Rothschild too…

But there was an added element in the form of bricks and mortar: approximately 100 Spanish properties would be used as collateral to ensure that, if the investments went down, 200-odd British pensioners could be made responsible of footing the bill.

The “experienced investor fund” is now probably worth less than half and the ex- mariners, ex-policemen, house wives and other Spain-based retirees who were instilled with the Fear of God with the Spanish Inheritance Tax -and fell for the scam- have their properties, and lives, bogged down.

Perverse Nicky Flux, loyal till death to SLM, keeps sending her monthly letter out to pensioners…letters coming from a company that would disgrace any Nigerian 419 business.

Terms & Conditions

Back in 2008, the Supreme Court in Spain ruled on an interesting case: a Spanish Casino had been lending money to some gamblers (by the way, what a silly thing to do) to bet in their premises. As was expected, the gamblers p****d the money up the wall and refused to return it. The Casino, on the strength of the contract they had made their clients sign, demanded payment of the lent sums, plus interest.

The Supreme Court, in application of the established doctrine that states that contracts that breach mandatory provisions are void, declared the contract unenforceable and dismissed the Casino’s attempts to obtain an order forcing the gambler to return the funds.

The provision that had been violated specifically banned Casino’s from lending money to customers, for the purpose of gambling.

In reaching the decision, the Supreme Court stated that even if administrative laws envisage a penalty for breachs of their own laws, such trangression necessarily has an effect on the validity of the contract, which has to be declare void.

By applying this to Equity Release, it is very possible that where the ER package is declared void, claimants will not only have the right to remove the charge attached to their properties but also, the loan that was given to them to invest.

What remains to be seen is whether Courts of law will take into consideration breaches in regulatory mandatory provisions, where these exist  (SLMH, Nykredit/Sydbank, International Property Finance Spain etc.), and apply article 1.306.2, or the tax benefit that was the main objective pursued by the contract.

In the first scenario, an Equity Release victim would be able to remove the mortgage charge from their property and claim the full loan back, before costs, losses etc., and in the second, remove the mortgage and demand the remaining balance on the loan. In both scenarios, the bank could lose tens of millions if the Courts apply, as would be expected, the following article:

Article 1.306:

If the deed which constitutes the unlawful cause should not constitute a crime or misdemeanour, the following rules shall be observed:

1. Where both contracting parties are at fault, none of them may recover what he has given pursuant to the contract, or claim the performance of what the other should have offered.

2. Where only one contracting party is at fault, he may not recover what he has given pursuant to the contract, or demand the performance of what he should have been offered. The other, who was a stranger to the unlawful cause, may claim what he has given, without the obligation to perform what he should have offered.

Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets!!

It was a matter of time before the efficient German state machinery got hold of banks selling tax-efficient insurance wrappers: in this case, Commerce Bank is the target.

So then, when is Jesper Hertz going to resign from his job, clear his conscience and implicate those who have forced him to sell the Capital Management Plan? Listen Jesper, all your past mistakes and regrets can be just that if you come out clean and openly confess to what your employer has been up to in the last few years, on the Costa del Sol, where a few hundred have been sold exactly the same product the German Prosecutor is angry about. 

Jesper, ERVA has a list of all customers Nordea Bank Luxembourg sold Equity Release to (a product combining a mortgage on a Spanish property and a Capital Managed Plan Life Insurance Wrapper), that’s Spanish Land Registry efficiency for you -some things do actually work down here- and so, if and when the Spanish Prosecutor decides to quit defending the King’s daughter-in-law, your bank should be next.

It was a matter of time before someone high up in the banking sector was sent down.

Kaupthing bosses have the dishonour of being the first -surely not the last- top bankers to go to prison for defrauding their company, their clients, their country and presumably too, the Tax Office.

But whilst this case may not be directly connected to Equity Release, it is clear that if someone at the bank came up with the brilliant idea of giving out a massive loan to a Middle East-based wealthy Arab to buy stock from the company, why not give smallish loans to owners of Spanish unencumbered property to invest, for instance, with Lex Life, the company Landsbanki owned?

Lawyers acting for victims of the “Spanish Enquity Release Package”, as advertised by Sydbank (Schweiz) AG, have formally filed a civil suit against this bank, alongside Nykredit (Realkredit) A/S, for statutory voidness and illegality of the named product, on the following grounds:

- Sydbank (Schweiz) teamed up with Nykredit Realkredit A/S, a Danish lender operating through a branch office in Marbella. Both banks contend that they provided separate services and that Nykredit stepped in to lend to British citizens as a result of a “introduction” made by Sydbank, and that was about it as far as their relationship went (it almost seemed as if victims of the Equity Release victims had thrown a party where both banks met each other…getting on famously thereafter).

- Sydbank (Schweiz) was and has never been registered to operate legally in Spain, whether via the Bank of Spain or the CNMV. Notwithstanding such serious infringement, they offered their services to the Spanish general public directly, and through a number of IFAs; they actually opened a branch office in Fuengirola yet failing, as expected, to even secure a municipal opening license from the Fuengirola Town Hall.

- Sydbank (Schweiz) offered a product that, in its inception, violated public policy: it was designed to reduce, ilegally, Spanish Wealth and Inheritance Taxes.

- Sydbank and Nykredit tempted British peaceful property owners to trangress the law, to do what was injurious to the law, the community, banking code of ethics and the very rights of their clients.

- Mads Petersen and Jorn Gregersen were both conscious -yet deliberately witheld  information they were only privy to- that the investment product PEERLESS SICAV, of which Sydbank was “promoter, investment manager and most important distributor of the Company”, in any of its 3 Subfunds, did not return more than 0.58% in 2006, and actually less in 2007, when 2 and 1 of the couples, respectively, took the product out.

Corporate rogues Petersen and Gregersen not only failed to advise their clients that the product was not suitable for them (never mind the inheritance tax avoidance illicit aim or the lack of regulatory clearance) but, in a display of extraordinary trickery, made them believe that the SICAV yield could actually pay for the cost of Nykredit mortgage loan, plus Sydbank’s commission and lastly, leave the clients a remaining disposable income sum (in simple layman terms, knowing that 0.58% would hardly pay off 6% they still concealed it, with catastrophic effects).

- Finally, Sydbank (Schweiz) AG and Nykredit Realkredit A/S dishonestly tried to disguise the fact that they are actually partners in Denmark, that Sydbank channels all of its loan business through Nykredit (page 4), against payment of a commission, and that Sydbank’s CEO, Karen Frosig, is in fact a director of Nykredit (pg 12).

Lawyers acting for clients have requested that the Spanish Equity Release, comprising the “Business Connection Agreement” (euphemism coined by Sydbank to refer to a regular bank account contract and an associated Peerless SICAV product) and any associated contracts (including Belize companies, as part of Sydbank’s concealmente technology), as well as the Spanish Nykredit mortgage loan, are rendered void ab initio , following the principles quod nullum est, nullum producit effectum (that which is a nullity, produces no effect) and simul stabunt, simul cadent (they will stand together or they will fall together). 

Mark Coutanche and Stephen Dewsnip have been requested to turn up at the Denia Court to be notified of criminal charges being bought against them.

The General Directorate of Police and the Guardia Civil in Madrid have been issued “with Code 1″ requests (current address and/or whereabout search warrant) so that they can be notified of ongoing criminal proceedings in Spain.

According to the warrant, the last known address was Paseo de la Castella N 35, 3rd floor, in Madrid, an address that coincides with that of their Madrid offices; it appears that an attempt to deliver a copy of the summons bore no fruits.

The warrant was issued on the 26th November 2013 and ends on the 26th November 2018.

Making service of process difficult has become a useful tool for any lawyer acting for Equity Release banks and NM Rothschild & Sons, a bank known for redifining the meaning of the term “double-standards”, is not going to miss an opportunity to make the lives of their clients-turned-victims a tad more miserable.

N.M. Rothschild & Sons is accused of selling mortgages to Spanish-based pensioners as a tool to defraud the Spanish Tax Office, albeit as a legal product, alongside deliberately concealing crucial data that would prove that their Equity Release product was impractical, from an investment point of view.

According to Sur Newspaper, two executives of the largest Danish bank, Danske Bank, have been ordered to appear before the Criminal Court 1 in Fuengirola to be deposed in relation to two charges of swindle and misleading publicity, brought by Euan Armstrong, a Briton who was sold an equity release mortgage.

The bank’s employees (Henrik Hjerrild Hansen -above left- and Morten Runo Waaben), currently working from the Luxembourg branch office,  are due to appear in Court on the 23^rd of January and are to be questioned by the Judge and the claimant’s legal representatives, Lawbird Legal Services.

The Court ruling has also ordered the legal representatives for Danske Bank International S.A. to appear in Court, on the same day, in a capacity of ‘civilly responsible party’, inasmuch as corporations did not have criminal responsibility when the alleged fraud took place.

According to the writ filed by the claimant in 2011, Danske Bank convinced him in 2005 to mortgage his retirement home in Alhaurin El Grande (Málaga) to guarantee a loan that was directly invested in financial speculative investment transactions, in Luxembourg, without the capital ever coming to Spain. The financial product, called “Capital Assurance”, promised interesting tax benefits compliant with Spanish laws in respect to Inheritance and Wealth Taxes by reducing or eliminating the taxable value of the property, once the mortgage was registered against it.

According to Lawbird’s representative, Danske Bank even falsified the content of a tax report on the product prepared by KPMG, one of the largest professional services company, by interpreting its conclusions in an unlawful manner with the purpose of facilitating sales.

The news release points out that KPMG has deemed ‘false’ a statement made by Danske Bank in their promotional marketing whereby the former had approved the tax benefits, as well as a formal request by KPM to Danske Bank to cease the use of their name and the removal of any reference to them having given their blessing to the financial product.

The text makes reference to a recent ruling by the Spanish Tax Office that concluded that the so called Equity Release on Spanish property is not a valid scheme for lawful tax mitigation but tax fraud, and a criminal offence where the defrauded sum exceeds €120,000 per tax year.

An indictment has also been brought against Peter Staarup, former Danske Bank CEO, as head of the Danish company that is believed to have sold in Spain over 100 “Capital Assurance” Equity Release mortgage loans worth tens of millions.

The Spanish regulator CNMV has confirmed that the Premier Group is a clandestine operation in respect to its activities in Spain. A letter received at the law firm Lawbird Legal Services lists a number of firms that have operated in Spain illegally, including The Premier Group (Isle of Man) Limited, SL Mortgage Funding nº 1 Limited and The Premier Balanced Fund PLC.

Other banks that have operated furtively are ABN Amro N.V. (Gibraltar Branch), International Property Finance (Spain) Limited, BNP Paribas Trust Company (IOM) Limited and Banca del Gottardo.

CNMVLetter10012014

Conservative Treasury minister Sajid Javid has vowed to ask Rothschild about the fate of more tan 100 victims of the Equity Release scam, following Labour MP Huw Irranca-Davies call on the Rothschild bankers to fulfil their “moral responsibility” to people living in fear of “penury”.

Video

Intervention starts at 17:08.

Source: UK Parliament Live TV  | Transcripts

AFP January 30, 2014 at 17:50

Three former executives of the Luxembourg subsidiary of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki were indicted for fraud in Paris, announced Thursday AFP a source close to the case.

The court granted prior information on the Icelandic financial crisis of 2008 mortgage was opened in 2009 after complaints from individuals who are victims of this controversial financial product, including Enrico Macias singer.

Before the investigation, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke has already indicted in 2011 Luxembourg subsidiary in bankruptcy for “fraud” and “lack of approval.” The judge placed under judicial supervision with the obligation to pay a deposit of € 50 million, a record amount in France.

It is now the men who sold the loan that are covered in a folder at the root of a showdown between the French and Luxembourg justices.

In recent weeks, Mr. van Ruymbeke delivered indictments for “scam” of three former executives of the bank: Torben Bjerregaard Jensen, a Danish national, Olle Lindfors, a Swede, and Failly Vincent, a Belgian, according to the source familiar with the matter.

Cash-strapped, Landsbanki has offered through its subsidiary in Luxembourg from 2006 to 2008 for individuals to mortgage their homes in exchange for favorable loans.

Assembly, complex, meant that the borrower receives a portion of the sum, while the bank reinvested the rest markets. The value of this portfolio would grow to the point of covering all aspects of the loan, which was repayable upon its conclusion.

“In this scheme, the bank was never losing,” said another source close to the case, the fraud totaling tens of millions of euros. “If things went well, everyone won. If things went wrong, the bank recovered a house. ”

Before the judge, the three men indicted contested that Landsbanki Luxembourg could promise customers that the investment returns would cover all repayments, according to a source close to the investigation.

Entering receivables

Hundreds of individuals, particularly in the south of France, Spain and Portugal, had signed these loans.

But in the wake of the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers bank in September 2008, several Icelandic banks had collapsed, including Landsbanki, which was nationalized in emergency.

Consequence of the crisis, the investments offered by Landsbanki Luxembourg have lost much of their value. Moreover, some of these investments were other than obligations of the parent company. Paid once for subscribers to find other means to repay their loans.

Where complaints of fraud by these individuals, some of whom have been ruined. They accuse the bank knowingly proposed financial package without checking the repayment capacity of clients.

The case is also played in Luxembourg. In bankruptcy, a subsidiary of Landsbanki has assigned its subscribers before the Justice of the Grand Duchy to enforce the loan guarantee-to-sell the mortgaged homes in order to pay its own creditors, chief among them the Central Bank of Luxembourg.

In early 2012, the Luxembourg court objected that the liquidator of the subsidiary pays the deposit of € 50 million ordered by the French justice.

At the request of the plaintiffs, Judge van Ruymbeke responded by ordering the seizure of mortgages held by the bank on several investors. A decision which has theoretical consequence to prohibit Landsbanki claim to French investors the loan.

However, the bank appealed that decision in an appeal that will be reviewed in February by the investigating chamber of the Court of Appeal of Paris.

AFP

Source: http://www.liberation.fr/economie/2014/01/30/trois-ex-cadres-de-landsbanki-luxembourg-mis-en-examen-pour-escroquerie_976644

The golfing event may be almost 2 years old but it is one of the very few photos, if not the only one, of Charles `Charlie` Walton, the creator of probably the  biggest, most damaging, lie the Costa del Sol has known: the Spanish Equity Release Scheme, and all the diverse spurious variations of the same sold to hundreds of unencumbered property owners.

Charlie Walton, who is now trading in gold (perhaps eager to emulate ‘Sir’ Nigel Goldman) is basically an unregistered unqualified Costa-cowboy who made millions cheating everyone, from pensioners to IFAs, from banks to investment companies, from lawyers to…more lawyers (the manipulated Uria & Menéndez report on equity release springs to mind).

It is simply dumbfounding to contemplate the profesional history of man who boasts having been Sales Director for ‘Premier Group’, a company that for starters, operated illegally in Spain…not without the conniving assistance of turn-a-blind-eye Isle of Man financial regulators.

We shall not end this post without giving out a word of warning: do not do business with this man…until he comes forward to help clean up the mess he and his great lie created.

(Read about Charlie Walton’s recent Golf Game).

Early this week, ERVA had lunch with a Marbella-based journalist who currently works for a national newspaper. The journalist (he has asked not to be named), who has taken a serious interest in the Equity Release scam, discussed with ERVA members prior investigations into the dealings of the husband of Mrs. Angeles Muñoz, Lars Broberg, notably how a company owned by both benefited from a political decision: the modification of the boundary-line separating the municipalities of between Benahavis and Marbella.

As a result of this wheeling and dealing, the couple ended up dramatically increasing the value of their land.

Now you may ask what does this have to do with Equity Release and Nordea Bank S.A.?

Answers in the next post!

Danske Bank International S.A. Head of Legal and Compliance claimed in Court that he could not recall if his client- the bank- gave tax advice to property owners abroad, but he thinks they did not.

Also, he was adamant that the bank’s understanding of the Capital Assurance product -in respect to IHT benefits- was that such benefits would be achieved by placing the loan in a Unit-Linked offshore based insurance policy, and never by reducing the value of the property.

The man, Ole Stenersen -whether through lack of sleep or a late heavy (another one) night out- was clearly confused. Firstly, he warned that he was no tax expert on the Capital Assurance scheme only to later dissect the financial product on the basis of its tax avoidance functionality.

Later he said that KPMG had only asked them (DB) to remove their name (KPMG), and confirmed that KPMG never questioned the tax advice that was given by Danske Bank, which according to Ole scrupulously followed KPMGs findings.

Finally, he insisted that their advertising material at no point stated that by taking out a mortgage would the customer reduce -legally- the value of the property.

Not to worry Ole, we are aware the flight from Luxembourg must have been long and the trip to Fuengirola arduous and so, at ERVA, we will lend you a hand with the homework by refreshing your selective memory with an IHT manual that is actually… your own publicity.

We hope you now remember better what was your employer exactly doing in Spain. 

(It defies logic what little respect you show for your own clients’ intelligence, your own banking system and, not the least, the Spanish Court system: if you’d been deposed in the UK you would have automatically been charged with perjury).