Britain's financial services watchdog is looking to shut down UK Land Investments (UKLI), the country's largest "landbanking" company, which has been the subject of Guardian Money warnings.

This will leave 4,500 investors with slices of virtually worthless farmland. It now appears that many might have avoided losses if the Financial Services Authority had listened to fraud squad requests to shut it down in 2005.

The FSA will ask the high court to wind up UKLI for operating as an illegal "collective investment scheme", thereby denying investors protection. The FSA says investors poured £69m into the firm, which sold small plots of "selected" farm land, claiming it could get planning permission for housing so the site would soar in value.

Investors are unlikely to get anything back from the liquidation as almost all the cash was soaked up in commissions and payments to directors and shareholders. But Guardian Money can reveal that fraud specialists at the City of London police were convinced UKLI was operating against the public interest when it first probed the Mayfair-based firm three years ago.

(Via The Guardian. To read the full story, click here)


Tweet