Cash Plus drama ...Carlos Hill and co-accused charged with fraud
April 16, 2008
Head of failed alternative investment scheme Cash Plus Limited, Carlos Hill, and his brother Bertram Hill were yesterday slapped with fraud-related charges along with Cash Plus' Chief Financial Officer Peter Wilson, hours after the police revealed that over US$7 billion held in overseas financial institutions have been traced to the embattled Cash Plus boss.
Carlos Hill was charged under the Larceny Act with four counts of fraudulent conversion and four counts of obtaining money by false pretence. He was also charged under Common Law with one count of conspiracy to defraud.
Bertram Hill, who the police say is a director of Cash Plus, and Wilson have both been charged with one count each of conspiracy to defraud.
The three are scheduled to appear in the Half-Way-Tree Resident Magistrate's Court Thursday.
The Hill brothers were last Thursday arrested during an early morning raid on Carlos Hill's upscale Norbrook, St Andrew home following complaints by investors that they have been defrauded out of their monies loaned to Cash Plus. Several boxes of documents and other items, including five high-end motor vehicles, were taken from the premises. Wilson was arrested that same night.
The arrests came a day after court-approved co-interim receiver manager, Kevin Bandoian, announced that Cash Plus did not have the necessary funds to start paying out the approximately $4 billion owed to the entity's 40,000 lenders by April 14 as promised.
The revelation of Carlos Hill's suspected billions was made at a mid-morning press briefing yesterday by Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green.
According to Green, documents seized from Carlos Hill's home revealed that a loan of US$1 billion was secured last January on "at least US$2.5 billion" held in five accounts in Germany.
In addition, Green said, the police will have to confirm whether bank guarantees, loans or letters of credit exist for the US$450 million held in Ghana/London and over US$4 billion at other overseas financial institutions, all under the name of Galina Trust Limited, an outfit believed to be registered in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The assistant commissioner said also that enquiries are being made into what appears to be the obtaining or transferring of substantial assets to Galina Trust from Cash Plus.
Green said that based on the assessment of additional documents, "other sign ificant sums and bank accounts" may exist and are believed to be held in the British Virgin Islands, UK, Spain, Kuwait and China.
He said also that investigators have become aware of another 106 overseas companies that may be affiliated directly to the 60-year-old Carlos Hill, separate and apart from the known 80 companies in countries across the globe that are part of the Cash Plus Group.
Green said that investigators were aware of other companies such as the China Index Fund in China, "where it would appear that funds have been transferred from a bank in the Turks and Caicos [Islands]".
A cautious Green, however, advised investors not to get carried away at Carlos Hill's apparent billions.
"Again, I urge restraint regarding what appears to be vast sums of money, as it will take time to confirm their existence and even longer to restrain them for the investors," Green advised.
Green also said that investigations into Cash Plus' operation revealed that the entity, which burst onto the local financial landscape five years ago with the promise of a 10 per cent monthly return on monies loaned to the company, was nothing more than a pyramid scheme.
". It appears that [Cash Plus] has been operating as a pyramid scheme, with investors providing funds to ensure that those earlier investors received their returns and these additional assets were then transferred overseas," Green said.
Cash Plus was closed down last December by the Financial Services Commission because it never obtained the relevant trading licences. Cash Plus' local accounts were then closed in January by the National Commercial Bank, stemming separate rulings in the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, lawyers representing the accused men lashed the police for what they termed the "offensive" press conference and accused the police high command of trying their clients in the media....
Author: Paul Henry
Source: Jamaica Observer
