Have you or somebody you know invested into The Resort Group on the island of Cape Verde?
Many investors who invested their cash into The Resort Group or who were advised to invest into The Resort Group (TRG) via their pensions have not received the returns that they were promised by the Resort Group and are now in a position where they find themselves struggling to get access to their money.
Despite this fact, TRG hotels continue to open their doors each day to international holiday makers, many investors in TRG have been asked to make additional payments in order to support their hotel investments particularly during the COVID period where like all international hospitality venues, TRG was negatively affected.
As TRG is presented as a commercial property investment many investors were advised to invest via a self-invested personal pension (SIPP). Financial Advisers and Investment Promoters were known to pray on inexperienced investors with existing pension pots as a means of promoting TRG in return for unregulated commissions. Most pensions that have been invested into fractional ownership have now been declared as having zero value and therefore if a regulated party such as a Financial Adviser, SIPP Provider or investment platform were involved, can make a claim for compensation via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or redress via the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Compensation Claims
SIPP providers like Novia, London & Colonial, Embark (previously called Liberty SIPP & Rowanmoor), Hartley Pensions (previously Greyfriars SIPP & Berkeley Burke), Guinness Mahon, GPC SIPP, Greyfriars DFM and Lifetime SIPP all have investments with The Resort Group.
Many of the IFAs that have been found responsible have been made to issue compensation through the Financial Ombudsman Service. After receiving multiple claims for financial redress from their clients, the vast majority of IFAs involved with TRG have fallen into liquidation.
Act Fast
Financial Services claims can be time barred, if you invested into TRG with a regulated company who are still trading then time could be running out.
If you have not received all of your compensation back including your investment, any fees paid and the lost interest on your savings or pension savings then you need to act fast.
Not only have we successfully claimed compensation on behalf of hundreds of clients with investments into TRG, we have also successfully filed for further financial redress from other companies who are still involved.
Call us today to find out more
There are a number of different ways to you may have invested into The Resort Group some of which we have covered here:
Fractional Owners
Investors had the option of either buying a full unit or becoming fractional owners. This meant that they became members of a company that was limited by guarantee but didn’t actually own any land on Cape Verde. Whilst the company may have entered into a purchasing contract with the Resort Group, in the vast majority of cases, it was never completed.
In some instances, investors were also charged a completion fee of between €2,500 and €5,000 prior to the properties having been built.
Purchases Made Outright
Whilst some fortunate investors have received direct ownership of a Resort Group property in Cape Verde, lots of the titles to them have not been completed, meaning that legal ownership has not gone to the individual investors or their pension funds either.
Loan Notes & Bonds
There were some IFAs that arranged for investments to be made via loan notes or bonds like TRG Bond Companies I, II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII. Each of these has at some point loaned money to the Resort Group and has credit arrangements in place according to the terms that are specified in the issued information memoranda from each bond company.
The Background
The Resort Group developments were subject to lots of media coverage upon their initial completion and even saw some celebrities jet out to Cape Verde to visit.
Lifestyle Connections
The Resort Group, was established to have connections to a company called Lifestyle Connections. This company was responsible for outbound calling people to set up free pension reviews with expert consultants at First Review Pension Services (also owned by the Resort Group).
The consultants were unregulated so were legally not allowed to make recommendations to clients.
There is often a fine line between what is deemed as advice or and what is information only, however TRG recruited a number of regulated independent financial advisers who provided the oversight on their investment process. Most of those firms are now dissolved.
The Resort Group
TRG may seem an attractive investment which is why many UK pension holders used SIPPs to transfer their pension savings for overseas investments into a fund that promised 10 percent interest each and every year.
It was claimed that the fund consisted of many properties from Resort Group developments. The consultants also openly admitted that they would receive a 7 percent commission on all cash investments that were made in the Resort Group.
Many of The Resort Group commercial property investments have now been deemed as Unregulated Collective Investment Schemes (UCIS), which are not suitable to recommend to clients who do not meet the criteria for High Net Worth or Sophisticated Investors.
Compensation Entitlement
Call us now for a phone or video consultation with one of our legal experts on 0800 041 8358 to find out if you are entitled to compensation, you may even be entitled to additional compensation if you have successfully claimed in the past.
