Friday, January 15, 2016

CIMA ALLOWS UNDERGROUND CAYMAN BANK TO OPERATE, DECEIVING AND DEFRAUDING CLIENTS


Take a minute and call this New York City telephone number: (646) 202-9301. You will be connected to "consultants" operating Dundee Merchant Bank,  a closed bank in the Cayman Islands. If you are a client, a smooth-talking agent will assure you that everything is fine with your investments, but there may be delays in accessing your money, whether for "compliance reasons, " or some other excuse.

Dundee Merchant Bank, which also operates as Dundee Bank, appears in most lists of Cayman Islands-based financial institutions, as "In Liquidation," through it seems to be alive and well. Dundee is a Class B bank, meaning that its license is only valid, so long as it is a subsidiary of full-service international bank. The problem is, the bank's Canadian parent was sold off years ago, and Canadian regulators then reportedly ordered its liquidation forthwith.

A review of government and court records in the Cayman Islands fails to show that Dundee Bank was ever placed into liquidation proceedings, and the regulatory authority, the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) took no action, then or since, This allowed the bank's officers, President Derek Buntain, and Senior vice President & Director, Sharon Lexa Lamb, to perpetrate the fiction, to their customers, that this brass-plate offshore bank was still in operation.

Lamb took possession of  the bank's telephone numbers, and answered all queries as if the bank was still in operation. She and two other individuals, Ryan Bateman and Fernando Moto Mendes, the other two members of the fraudsters who came to be known as the Cayman Gang of Four, transferred investors' funds out of accounts at Butterfield Bank, to Bateman-controlled accounts. Bateman thereafter, explicitly claiming that the money was that of his shell company, B & C Capital, Limited, traded securities in the United States with it, through State Street Bank, in Boston, and other American commercial banks. The estimated losses exceed USD$450m.

All this while, CIMA negligently ignores Dundee, even after victims have filed complaints about their missing money. It takes no action against either the bank, or its officers, notwithstanding that multiple reports assert a massive trading scheme, fraud, and breach of fiduciary relationship. CIMA, which has exclusive jurisdiction over Cayman banks, fails to discharge its legal, moral, and ethical, responsibilities under the law, and its owns regulations.

Now, even after a major civil suit against the bank, and Lamb, are filed in Grand Cayman, its officers and staff members sit idle; it has not released any information for the benefits of the investing public, nor sought any remedies against Dundee Bank, which many financial professionals believe constitutes gross negligence. On wonder how long its will be before the officers at CIMA find themselves to be defendants in civil litigation in Grand Court, or being interviewed by the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service, and being asked to explain why they should not be charged with a crime.






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