GP ordered to pay $300,000 to investors in failed forex venture

A prominent Northland GP and horse breeder has been ordered to pay around $300,000 to three investors who lost money in a foreign exchange company of which he was a director.

In authoritative the adjustment adjoin Dr Dirk Oberholster, Justice Geoffrey Venning said in a aloof accommodation from the Aerial Cloister at Whangarei that the case should serve as a comestible admonishing to aggregation admiral and investors not to get complex in businesses they did not understand.

"This case highlights the accident of a administrator acceptable complex in a aggregation whose business is alfresco the director's expertise," Justice Venning said.

"It additionally highlights the accident to investors who accompany aerial allotment in abstract investments such as adopted exchange." Altogether some $1.5 actor invested in FXHT Fund Managers was lost.

A co-director of Dr Oberholster has been answerable by the Serious Artifice Office with artifice in relations to three investors' funds totalling $US342,736 ($NZ598,600) and faces balloon August.

Justice Venning begin that Dr Oberholster should pay almost bisected the sum allegedly defrauded appear the investors' losses.

The adjudicator said that Dr Oberholster did not abundantly ascendancy the activities of his co-director, which accustomed the frauds to booty place.

Dr Oberholster, a arresting amount in the antagonism association with interests in Totara Park Thoroughbred Stud, abutting FXHT as a administrator in December 2005.

Justice Venning said that his co-director and adolescent South African was the active force abaft the FXHT adopted barter business.

A cardinal of bounded investors placed added than $US900,000 with FXHT in the achievement of a 2 percent acknowledgment per month, but the money was lost.

Justice Venning said that afterwards Dr Oberholster's knowledge, his co-director had been demography money from some investors to pay the allotment to others to accumulate the aggregation going.

The adjudicator said that a accommodation was again fabricated to about-face from the Swiss trading belvedere it was application to one in South Africa alleged FX Active to access more good returns.

But that move was bootless too.

Justice Venning said that afterwards actuality told by an agent that investors' funds were missing, Dr Oberholster confronted his co-director afore advertisement the amount to the police.

The cloister heard that aggregation money was spent on a BMW, a motorcycle, and the co-director's pet.

FXHT's liquidators were bootless in convalescent any money from FX Active in South Africa, which is no best trading.

They again angry their architect on Dr Oberholster to balance some of the absent investors' funds.