Berkhamstead director banned after misappropriating £9 million

Two foreign exchange agents have been banned for a total of 24 years after securing more than £9 million from clients only to use the funds to payback previous clients.

Peter John Roebuck, 65, from Berkhamsted, and Francis Edward Tarling, 75, from Preston, both received 12-year disqualifications and their bans are effective from October 1, 2020.

The foreign exchange agents are now banned from acting as directors or directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company.

Roebuck and Tarling were directors of a company called Concept Consultancy Services Limited and between May 2011 and May 2016, the company entered into Private Loan Agreements with clients worth at least £9.1 million.

Clients were promised that their funds would be used by a third party to conduct forex trades and Concept Consultancy Services would make returns to the client to meet monthly interest and loan repayments.

But the company began to struggle and in September 2017, Concept Consultancy Services entered into administration before being liquidated in August 2018.

The company’s insolvency, however, brought Concept Consultancy Services to the attention of the Insolvency Service, who discovered several instances of misconduct.

Investigators established that £9.3 million of client’s funds was paid into two of Concept Consultancy Service’s bank accounts.

However, at least £8.4 million was used to meet the interest and loan repayments of earlier clients.

Further enquiries discovered that at least 15 investors who entered into loan agreements after September 2015 received no repayments from Concept Consultancy Services.

At the date of the company’s administration, the foreign exchange firm had no funds in its bank account and owed at least £11.2 million to 204 clients who were expecting contractual interest and loan repayments.

On September 10, 2020, the Secretary of State accepted 12-year disqualification undertakings from both Roebuck and Tarling.

Rob Clarke, Chief Investigator for the Insolvency Service, said: "Our investigations proved that Roebuck and Tarling accepted millions of pounds from clients who thought their funds were going to be used for foreign exchange trades.

"However, this was nothing more than an unscrupulous scheme and unbeknownst to investors, new money coming in went straight out to service the debts owed to previous clients.

"12 years is a significant amount of time for Roebuck and Tarling to be banned from running companies, reflecting the severity of their misconduct, and this case illustrates that directors who fail in their duties will be removed from the corporate arena."