Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Original Article)
When there are two sets of accounts with widely varying outcomes it is hard to avoid an ugly possibility: some form of fraud has been afoot. This is the proposition investigators of Trio Capital are now examining when it comes to one fund managed by Trio, the ARP Growth fund.
Trio Capital is the Albury-based fund manager that shot to unwanted prominence when its control over a series of managed investment schemes and superannuation trusts was seized by regulators in December.
A total of $426 million in investments is frozen as administrators and investigators pick through accounts to piece together where the money has ended up.
Regulators acted on a tip-off from a Bronte Capital fund manager, John Hempton, that one of its managed funds, Astarra Strategic Fund, was posting extremely unlikely returns.
To date attention has focused on the missing $118 million placed through Astarra Strategic Fund, which was supposed to be invested through the British Virgin Islands. BusinessDay has reported extensively on the links between Astarra Strategic Fund’s former managers Shawn Richard and Eugene Liu and their former employer Pacific Continental Securities.
Pacific Continental Securities (UK) was a disreputable broker that sold nearly worthless penny stocks to unsuspecting investors, falling into administration in 2007 before the Financial Services Authority could fine it £2 million. But the ARP Growth Fund is a completely separate fund, with its own substantial problems. Those problems are clearly shown by two separate sets of accounts for its main investment, also made through the British Virgin Islands, in a fund called Professional Pensions ARP.
One set of accounts provided to ARP Growth investors was a meticulous list of about 15 exotic hedge funds that make up the underlying investments of $50 million placed into the fund back in 2005 or so. Accounts in Australian dollars show a cheap flights Townsville to Brisbane remarkable story. Through the most volatile period …continue reading