Trio Capital Funds Wound Up By Administrator

Post by NeilMc on February 12, 2010 · Under Business News, Company News, Wealth Management, investments, news · Comment

A group of managed investment and superannuation funds with $260 million in assets, once run by bankrupt investment company Trio Capital are to be closed down.

The six investment funds which include the Astarra Startegic Fund, a fund which invested $118 million in an opaque company registered in the British Virgin Islands, are being forced to wind themselves up following action by the administrator of Trio, PPB.

The administrator said it felt it had to wind up the funds after confirming the existence of investments made by the Astarra Strategic Fund and the ARP Growth Fund in companies based in the secretive tax haven. ARP held much of its $59 million of assets in the British Virgin Islands company.

The four other funds in the group were also being wound up because of exposure to the two main funds, which had invested in the British Virgin Island companies PPB administrator Neil Singleton said.

“There are a number of schemes with substantial assets which are unlikely to be realised in the short term and are therefore proposed to be wound up,” Mr Singleton said.

Last year stock market regulator the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) removed Trio Capital, which has offices in the New South Wales border town of Albury as manager and trustee of $426 in funds.

The two men who controlled Trio Capital, a Canadian and an American, did a deal with the regulator under which they were required to surrender their passports.
The administrator PPD says it will hold a public examination of the two men in late March.

Mr. Singleton said Trio Capital raised the funds nationally, through a network of financial planners, and that the office in Albury was primarily used for back office tasks .
The administrator on Thursday rejected claims made by the Association of Independently Owned Financial Planners, that it had been successful in locating the missing money.

“Contrary to recent media reports, we, or any other party, have not been able to establish the existence or value of the foreign assets of ASF,” PPB said in a report to creditors.

The ASF is believed to have used a private investigator in Hong Kong to locate the missing money, which it says had been used to invest in five Hong Kong based hedge funds through a BVI company called EMA International.

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