Spanish Equity Release Fiasco

The promotional literature by Swiss Choices Equity Release leaves no room for doubt when signing up the Equity Release obnoxious scheme. As they indicate, “do not make the mistake of leaving any action until the last minute…because you don’t know when this will be.”

Developed by Graydon & Associates Costa Blanca S.L. in connection with Swiss Life (Liechtenstein) AG and BFI Consulting AG (whatever those initials stand for), according to the duo, “it was fine-tuned to provide current and future liquidity whilst ensuring the highest possible level of safety, privacy and asset protection.” . 

To cap it all, they declared that “this kind of long-term planning requires utmost solidity – the kind that only the time-tested and stringent insurance and banking regulations of Switzerland can offer”

This financial flyer needs to be read in depth because of the extraordinary record it holds: that of being able to insert one lie within every three words!

Documents

• Swiss-Choices-Equity-Release-Brochure (PDF ~500 kb)

admin Uncategorized Graydon & Associates, Swiss Choices, Swiss Life

The Financial Services Board (FSB), the financial regulator in the Republic of South Africa, had warned back in 2005 that an arrest warrant had been issued in this country against Norman Edwin Steele, as a result of a criminal investigation including fraud.

Mr. Steele, faced with the prospect of serving time at a Durban prison relocated to the Costa del Sol and went on to work with Graydon & Associates, unregulated IFAs operating in Spain and sold, on behalf of Danske Bank, equity-release schemes to mostly British pensioners on the basis of a crafty stratagem that was supposed to release their inheritors from potential IHT liability (Inheritance Tax).

Well, back in time as far as the 19^th of June of 2002, the Jersey Financial Services Commission had warned, through a public statement titled “Arrow International Management Services Limited And Norman Edwin Steele“, that Mr. Norman Edwin Steele has not received authorization to conduct investment business within meaning of Law, and that the Commission has also obtained evidence that demonstrates that the above named persons have been conducting illegal investments business from within South Africa.

It finally states that any person who has had investment dealings with AIMSL (the operating company for Mr Steele) since 1 July 1999 should contact Enforcement.

Danske Bank’s guys on the Costa del Sol should have stayed off the sangria when conducting their due diligence on their appointed representatives because, as a result, they ended up engaging the services of one pseudo-financial advisor on an arrest warrant, who was warned to never operate in Jersey, and a further gentlemen, Mr.Graydon, who together with Steele made tens of thousands of euros from selling tax-evading equity-release under the auspices of Danske Bank (although the former was only confirmed to be an expert in “fiscal and accountancy advice and signatory to Introducer/Referrer agreements with a number of highly regulated international banks that offer loan facilities on Spanish located property which can be used for a number of purposes such as equity release”, Mr. Graydon dixit.)

I wonder if Mr. Steele and Mr. Graydon and, by extension, Danske Bank and all other Equity-Releasers (Nordea, Nykredit/Sydbank, Rothschild, etc.), even realized that by encouraging their clients to sign these products to avoid IHT they were indeed pushing their inheritors to contemplate committing tax fraud in Spain which, when over €120,000 of unpaid tax per year, could trigger a conviction of up to 5 years imprisonment and a fine of up to 6 times that of the sum defrauded.

If we read articles 12 and 13 of the Inheritance Tax Act, it clearly stipulates that charges such as mortgages that don’t entail the reduction of the value of the property are not deductible, even though the debts these mortgages guarantee may be deducted if they are real. But which debt, if the money was supposed to be sitting in an offshore account?

Antonio Flores Uncategorized Arrow International Management Services Limited, Danske Bank, Graydon & Associates, Norman Edwin Steele