By David Marchant From OffshoreAlert

$130 million Cayman Ponzi scheme under Brighton SPC umbrella fund City of London police investigating £100 m-plus Ponzi scheme by CWM FX
Both schemes part of rampant fraud by Belvedere Management Group
Group headed by David Cosgrove, Cobus Kellermann and Kenneth Maillard
Belvedere operates in many countries, particularly Mauritius, Guernsey, Cayman & South Africa

Offshore fund group Belvedere Management, which claims to have $16 billion of assets under administration, management and advisory, appears to be one of the biggest criminal financial enterprises in history, headed by David Cosgrove, Cobus Kellermann and Kenneth Maillard, OffshoreAlert can reveal.

For more on this story go to: http://www.offshorealert.com/david-cosgrove-cobus-kellermann-kenneth-maillard-belvedere-management-fraud.aspx

Related stories:

Thai links to ‘one of the biggest criminal financial enterprises in modern history’.

From Andrew Drummond

World-wide financial scandal exposed on OffshoreAlert

A 54-year-old Irishman is heading what could be one of the biggest offshore criminal financial enterprises in history, Offshore Alert Claims today.

Investors could have been taken down for over US$15 billion.

The Mauritius based Belvedere Management Group run by Irishman David Dawson Cosgrove, South African fund manager Cobus Kellermann, and 42-year-old Mauritian accountant Kenneth Maillard, administers some 125 hedge funds, and owns and operates dozens of other companies involved in fund administration, securities broking, life insurance, investment management.

But, claims Offshore Alert; ‘not only are there signs of Belvedere being on the verge of collapse, but evidence shows:

*Funds that are blatantly fraudulent, including a current $130 million Ponzi scheme in Cayman.
*Funds that simply disappear or fail in dubious circumstances, including the £400 million Harlequin Property Fund that has been unraveling over the last few years.

*False Net Asset Values that deceive investors into believing their money is growing;*Investors unable to make redemptions.

*Misappropriation of millions of dollars by insiders via a web of offshore companies.

*Related-party transactions that are used to strip out cash and artificially inflate assets.

*Conflicts of interest galore, which enable insiders to conceal their illegal activity.

*Material omissions and false statements in offering documents and marketing material

Offshore Alert warns that ‘assisting them are professional service providers who are willfully complicit or grossly negligent, leaving themselves exposed to massive liabilities when the group inevitably collapses.’ Among the service providers are well known banks.

Among the funds named in the report by Offshore Alert website boss David Marchant are the Caldora International Fund, and Caldora Asset Management (of which Cosgrove is listed as director ) which have already been exposed on this site and was being flogged by Phuket based former bankrupt British businessman Neal Davies.

The deVere Group which are very active in Thailand has put some US$50 million of client funds into the Strategic Growth Fund, managed by Cobus Kellerman.

And an offshoot of Belvedere the CWM group also has a Thai company CWM Thailand.

Its Forex Company, CWM FX was raided this month by the City of London Police’s fraud squad.

‘Thirteen employees were arrested as part of a criminal investigation into what a source said was a Ponzi scheme totaling at least £100 million.

COMMENT: Benny WongMarch 18, 2015 at 7:51 AM
“It’s a small world – Belvedere seems to be popular with other Thailand-based “IFA” firms beyond deVere. One of them even shares a physical address in Mauritius : C/o Belvedere Management Limited, 7A, 7th Floor Ebene Mews, 57 Ebene Cybercity, Ebene That same firm lists Belvedere as a sponsor of many of its Thailand programs.”

IMAGE: Neal ‘Caldora’ Davies

For more on this story go to: http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2015/03/thai-links-to-one-of-biggest-criminal.html

Deaths expose troubled business

From M&G Centre for Investigative Journalism

The empire of slain businessperson Julian Williams appears poised for collapse, following the announcement this week that his Basileus Capital group has initiated “business rescue ­proceedings”.

Business rescue is an alternative to liquidation provided for under the updated Companies Act.

Also at risk are investors in the JSE-listed BK One, a capital-raising vehicle for Basileus.

Williams was shot dead at the Basileus offices on July 26, apparently by former business partner Herman Pretorius, who apparently then turned the gun on himself.

At the time, Williams’s colleagues said he was leaving behind “a strong team of nearly 50 experienced people” who would continue to run Basileus projects.

But an investigation by the Mail & Guardian suggests that Williams’s business, mostly run in partnership with former ANC heavyweight James Ngculu, was teetering at the time of his death.

Trail
There is a trail of related party trans­actions, comprising intercompany investments, loans and write-offs, which raise questions about how much of the cash Basileus was able to raise from investors actually made its way into the project “pipeline” of which it boasted.

Pretorius raised similar concerns earlier this year about investments in a Basileus subsidiary, SA Superalloys, a shareholder in specialised alloy producer Avalloy.

He wrote to Williams in June to complain that money invested in SA Superalloys had been intended as working capital to ramp up Avalloy’s operations, but the money had been funnelled into Basileus.

Pretorius ran an unorthodox invest­ment scheme and there are suggestions it was a pyramid scheme — new investors’ money was used to pay interest to earlier investors and create the impression of high returns.

It appears the collapse of the Pret­orius scheme’s investments in SA Superalloys — Williams’s company stopped paying interest to its investors — was going to cause a chain reaction for Pretorius, which led to his fatal confrontation with Williams.

Under curatorship
Following Pretorius’s death, one of his investment schemes, the Relative Value Arbitrage Fund, was placed under curatorship, owing a staggering R1.8-billion to about 3 000 investors, it has been reported.

It appears that Basileus is similarly vulnerable and there are likely to be knock-on effects. According to a well-placed source, aeroengine builder Rolls-Royce, which has a 13% shareholding in Avalloy and is the alloy-maker’s primary customer, stopped taking the company’s product in March.

This could not be independently confirmed and Basileus declined to answer questions this week, pending the business rescue proceedings.

An Avalloy representative confirmed the Rolls-Royce supply was “on hold” while the companies “renegotiate their long-term agreement”.

The Industrial Development Cor­poration also invested R35-million in Avalloy for a 10% share.

Pre-listing
BK One raised about R200-million when it listed on the JSE in December last year, but nearly all of that came from institutional investors, who took up shares in an initial public offering ahead of the listing.

The money has gone into Basileus subsidiaries, according to the BK One annual report issued at the end of February, but there are questions about both the source of the R200-million and how it has been spent.

For example, of the R65-million purportedly invested by BK One in Avalloy, almost nothing appears to have gone into Avalloy itself.

The February report discloses that R52-million was used to buy shares in Avalloy from SA Superalloys and from a mysterious Mauritian investment fund called Four Elements.

A further R11.6-million was spent in taking over a loan to Avalloy that Four Elements had extended. Part of the loan had been converted into shareholding, meaning BK One had bought an effective 10.5% shareholding in Avalloy at a cost of R65-million.

In contrast, the Industrial Development Corporation got its 10% in effect for free — a bonus for providing a R35-million loan.

Curious
Even more curious is that an associate of Four Elements was the major subscriber to shares in BK One, accounting for nearly half of the R200-million raised.

The second-biggest shareholder in BK One, with 17%, is another Mau­ritian entity, Two Seasons, which shares the same management team as Four Elements: Ken Maillard and David Cosgrove of Belvedere Management, Mauritius. A message left on Belvedere’s automated answering service went unanswered.

The rest of the cash BK One raised went into other companies controlled by Basileus, mainly in what appears to be unsecured loans.

According to the BK One report, the listed company used R56-million to take over a shareholder loan in fish-farming start-up Pure Ocean East London. The shareholder is not disclosed, but Pure Ocean is in effect a subsidiary of Basileus.

More loans
BK One also provided a loan of R35-million to construction firm Tor Holdings and a loan of R33-million to Cash Connect Management Services, both Basileus subsidiaries.

BK One chief executive Dean Richards said he was reluctant to comment on the Basileus business rescue before he had spoken to investors, but added: “We are applying our minds and working really hard to ensure our shareholders’ interests are looked after.”

For more on this story go to: http://amabhungane.co.za/article/2012-08-17-deaths-expose-troubled-business

UPDATED: Thu 26 March 2015

CWM PRESS STATEMENT

A spokesman for the company said: “CWM believe that they have been the victim of an orchestrated campaign initiated by individuals motivated by personal animosity.

CWM understands from third parties that clients have received calls from an individual; the purpose of the calls appears to have been to raise doubt about CWM as a business. Despite requests made of the police, they have thus far failed to provide the name of a single investor who has raised concerns with them.

CWM have made an offer to the City of London Police to ring fence funds, additional to those invested, to underwrite investors’ protection and allay any genuine concerns.

CWM World is a respected group of companies with a multi-million pound turnover, operating with dozens of partners in a number of countries. There is no sustainable basis for these allegations and we will continue to operate as a premier brand”.