CR-2023-002766 - [2025] EWHC 2818 (Ch)

The Company, as I have indicated, has entered special administration. The background to that is that on 5 April 2023 the Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) issued a first supervisory notice to the company based on concerns about the conduct of its former Chief Financial Officer, a Mr Harfield. Mr Harfield had been a defendant in a number of multiple interconnected court cases and had been made subject to a worldwide freezing order and was also subject to a prison sentence for contempt of court. Subsequent investigations have revealed that in the period from approximately January 2019 to April 2023 more than €8.7 million in unauthorised payments had been made by the Company to Mr Harfield or to entities connected with him.

Once the first supervisory notice had been issued by the FCA, the Company was unable to comply in terms of the conditions required for the carrying on of the business. It was realised that the Company was insolvent. This was due in large part if not entirely to the missing monies that I have referred to and the result was that the directors applied to the court to place the Company into special administration.

On 30 May 2023 a special administration order was made by ICC Judge Prentis and the JSAs were appointed as the special administrators.

Upon appointment, the JSAs carried out investigations. They ultimately determined to maximise recoveries to customers by focusing their time and resources on the recovery of the safeguarded funds and the other key assets in the estate with a high likelihood of recovery, there being obvious problems which quickly emerged in relation to ability to recover sums from Mr Harfield, not least the high costs of doing so and the risks that nothing, in fact, would be recovered.