THE accounts at a collapsed funeral planning company have been bled dry, it can be revealed.
Victims chasing compensation from beleaguered firm Iberian ‘will struggle’ to get compensation, the Olive Press has learnt.
“There are no funds left in the company’s bank accounts,” insisted one of the victims, Stan West.
West, 79, who has set up the Iberian Victims Association, has spent months digging into the suspect accounting of the firm, set up by expat Stephen Nelson in 2006.
This comes ten months after we revealed how the business shut without telling its thousands of clients across Spain and Portugal.
The company, which vanished overnight on March 3 last year, left expats with no access to their plans which each cost over €3,000 (and as much as €7,500).
Most victims are ‘elderly and can’t afford to purchase a new plan’ explained West, from north east Scotland and now based near Torrevieja in Alicante.
“They are now suffering real anxiety because of the burden they feel they are to their families,’ he added.
Despite months of no success, the association – which already has 40 members – is determined to find out exactly what happened to the victims’ hard earned cash.
After the group’s lawyers discovered there were ‘no remaining funds’ their next step is likely to bring in police and denounce the former owners for fraud.
While Nelson died last year, his ex-wife, her son and a number of former employees may be in the firing line.
Photo: The Olive Press
It comes despite all contracts misleadingly stating that funds were held ‘safely and securely’ in accounts with BBVA, Santander and HSBC in the UK’.
Funeral plan companies were not regulated in Spain as they were in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority.
“Spain is certainly still behind England in a lot of ways, and it’s like stepping back in time with a lack of regulation,” Linn Mcnally, a 77 year old who ‘scrimped and saved’ to buy her plan with Iberian, told the Olive Press.
Mcnally was one of many who spoke up when the firm first vanished and left the expat community in tatters.
Following its disappearance, the Olive Press established in a hard-hitting investigation spanning three countries, that the firm and its subsidiaries had been in free fall for years and was extremely badly run.
It appears the downturn for Iberian began when Nelson moved from Alhaurin el Grande, in Malaga, to the Algarve just under a decade ago.
Facing various legal issues with rival funeral companies, he decided it would be easier to base himself there, while leaving a team to run the main office in Alhaurin.
This office closed almost two years ago and in April was being rented out to a real estate company. From its closure, until the company’s disappearance, all sales were being conducted online.
With no current cast iron proof of wrongdoing or even an intent to mislead, victims are left wondering what’s happened to their money.
West urges those affected to come forward, get in touch with him via Facebook and join his Iberian Victims Association.
Click here to read more Spain News from The Olive Press.
