Walter Finch
ROYAL Gibraltar Police have finally opened a criminal investigation into the activities of Globix director Damian Carreras after his company lost €40 million in a suspected Ponzi scheme.
The police said the move forms part of a wider investigation into the operation of Globix and the alleged losses to investors.
The RGP called it ‘a very complex matter’ and refused to comment on queries by the Olive Press as to whether they are liaising with Spanish police.
Carreras is known to be ‘hiding out’ in Barcelona, while his co-suspects, Russian nationals Pavel Sidorov and Alla Babenko, reside in Alicante.
News that Carreras is finally facing a criminal investigation will come as music to the ears of long-suffering investors, some of whom stand to lose six or seven figure sums from the scam.
Gibraltarian Carreras, 39, stands accused of running a Ponzi scheme after taking in €25 million in investor capital – from some of the most powerful individuals in Gibraltar.
The list of investors includes former Chief Minister Sir Peter Caruana, current Leader of the Opposition Keith Azzopardi, and wife of the current Chief Minister, Justine Picardo.
The giant crypto exchange went into liquidation in March one week after the Olive Press first broke the scandal, leading to legal proceedings to recover the missing funds.
Lead liquidator Adrian Hyde told the Olive Press that the criminal investigation would not ‘trump the work of recovering the missing funds on behalf of the creditors.’
“The police are concerned with the criminal responsibility for the actions of the individual under investigation relating to the Globix trading platform,” he added.
In testimony last week, Carreras had rejected the ‘overwhelming evidence’ that his company was a Ponzi scheme.
He insisted: “This was a trading platform that made dividends for investors and not a Ponzi scheme.”
Instead he pointed the finger at a Ukrainian IT company who ‘stole the platform from us.’
But investigators have dismissed this tale as ‘unreliable’, and suspect Carreras and Sidorov still have access to the system Globix.
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