Whatever Happened To London Nominees And The Football Fund?

[Arkady]

A couple of years ago a BVI registered shell company called London Nominees hit the headlines with an investment product called the Football Sub-Fund that recruited a number of big names from the football world and was aimed at expat investors who are crazy about football but not particularly knowledgeable about finance or investments.

The fund was supposed to raise large sums of money to discover and nurture unknown West African players with huge potential and sell them for high prices on the world market and even buy and sell whole football clubs. But the website was short on details as to how this would be achieved and provided no projections or financial information at all. The fund recruited unemployed young Brits with no financial training from the UK, flew them out to Bkk and installed them without work permits in a call centre in Srinakarin Road with cold calling scripts in front of them. Several of them quit almost immediately and announced to UK tabloids that the jobs were not what they had expected, whatever that might have been. On closer inspection some of the big football names behind the fund turned out to be wanted for questioning by the Monetary Authority of Singapore in connection with a fraudulent investment scheme promoted there selling tiny plots of land in the UK that were alleged to be in green zones that were about to be re-zoned for commercial development but weren't. One of the main principals based in Bkk allegedly had a somewhat shady background in connection with sales of dubious investment schemes to expats.

After all the fanfare and enthusiastic feedback from football mad expats things seem to have rather fizzled out. The extravagant claims that formerly adorned the websites of London Nominees and The Football Fund http://www.londonnominees.com/ and http://www.thefootballfund.com/ have all disappeared and been replaced by the stark inscription, "CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION". Brian Robson, one of the football names behind the fund, was trapped into making some ill advised claims on camera by a sting team from the UK's Channel 4 http://www.martinlee.sg/bryan-robson-misfiring-football-fund/ and ads have now appeared in the Thai English language press advising investors who are less than pleased with the performance of The Football Sub-Fund to contact a Swiss based company called Financial Intelligence & Processiong http://www.fipcor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=1〈=en with a view to joining in class actions against the principals behind the fund.

I wonder how much money was raised for the fund after London Nominees announced in 2010 it had commitments of US$40 million and what happened to it.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Arkady