Trading account for alleged Ponzi scheme operators in deficit – lawyer

…laws will be tightened to address such fraudulent, other investments – AG

The trading account for Accelerated Capital Firm Inc, the company accused of fleecing thousands of Guyanese of millions of dollars in a major Ponzi scheme, is currently in deficit. This was recently revealed by one of the attorneys representing the company’s principles Cuban national Yuri Garcia Dominguez and his wife, Ateeka Ishmael.

During a recent press conference, the lawyer said, “The account has found itself in a deficit, [Garcia-Dominquez] has to bring it into profitability. It is only then when it is into profitability that persons will be able to really have their monies in a shorter time because his [Garcia-Dominguez] ability to withdraw will be greater and the amounts of monies to be withdrawn will be greater.”
Garcia-Dominguez had offered to repay his 17,000 Guyanese investors using cryptocurrency, the most widely used being bitcoins. But Attorney General Anil Nandlall has made it clear that this is not a legal tender in Guyana. The lawyer said that given the state of the trading account right now, the broker will limit the amount of money his client can withdraw.

The lawyer claimed that if his client attempts to close the account and have all the monies returned, he will face a penalty in which he will have to pay some 68.5 per cent of the capital investment. He added that the profitability of the trading account took a major hit while his clients were incarcerated after being slapped with over 70 charges for allegedly obtaining monies by false pretence.
Together, Garcia-Dominquez and his wife have been released on over $30 million bail with instructions to lodge their passports and report to the Criminal Investigations Department Headquarters, Eve Leary, Georgetown. Nevertheless, the lawyer said that ever since Garcia-Dominguez was released on bail “he has been trying to bring the account into profitability.”
The lawyer estimated that there should be a “significant turnaround” with the account in the next four to five weeks. This, he added, will give the company the ability to close certain floating trades and withdraw larger amounts to prevent a chaotic situation for repayments. Once this happens, he promised that all investors will be reimbursed their capital within four to five months.
Asked specifically how many investors have been repaid to date, the lawyer stated, “I do not have that stats right now because I have not been monitoring the day-to-day payments at all. What I can say is that persons were repaid and millions of dollars have been repaid. I do not have the figures right now. The remaining persons to be repaid are still very significant…”

Tightened
As more and more persons, especially the poor, are becoming victims of Ponzi schemes, Attorney General Anil Nandlall, last Thursday, announced that to safeguard Guyanese, Government will have to tighten laws to ensure that there are strong penalties for perpetrators.
“We certainly have to look back at our laws to tighten them to make Ponzi schemes and devices of this type a criminal offence and to have very strong penalties attached to them when they are committed. Right now, we do not have any laws that specifically address this issue. And that is why we have to resort to the ordinary criminal law and common law to get offences to charge these people with.”
Nandlall said that this state of affairs “must change quickly” as Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent investments have become the new phenomenon, that has not only manifested themselves in Guyana but right across the Caribbean region. Against this backdrop, he added that the region as a whole will now have to prepare itself for greater proliferation of these schemes and fraudulent devices of a similar type.
According to the Attorney General, one of the lawyers representing the alleged Ponzi scheme operators had reached out to him seeking help. As such, he said that he instructed the lawyers to pen their requests in a letter and the Government will make every effort to assist, provided that what they are requesting is lawful and permissible.
“I never heard a word back…,” Nandlall informed. In light of this, the Attorney General noted that this shows that this was simply a fraudulent design that was executed with great precision and skill and has unlawfully extracted from thousands of Guyanese millions of dollars.
“I am hoping that every effort will be made to expedite these prosecutions so that at the end of the day, the persons who have been defrauded will feel some sense of satisfaction that justice has prevailed. We have to hope of the two operators do not flee the country. Of course, they have been backlisted and the Police have their passports, but you know we have porous borders.”
Taking this into consideration, Nandlall said he hopes that the Police will continue to have Dominguez and his wife under continuous scrutiny so that they will not be able to disappear.
The Attorney General pointed out that this Ponzi scheme has yielded grand success for the defrauders, and has given rise to similar schemes across the country. “They [defrauders] take their [investors] life savings, they take capital from their businesses… I know people who have mortgaged their homes and have taken the proceeds and invested it into these schemes and they have lost all.”