Success for Taylor Wessing and Independent Trustee Services Limited following advice on £3m pension fraud

04-Nov-2005  |  Employment & Pensions, Litigation & Dispute Resolution, Reconstruction & Corporate Recovery

Taylor Wessing has been advising Independent Trustee Services Limited ("ITS") following its appointment by the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority as trustee of the Cheney Pension Scheme further to the discovery of a £3m fraud.

Now that a court order preventing the publication of the outcome of the criminal trial has been lifted, it can be confirmed that Serious Fraud Office ("SFO") prosecutions resulted in five convictions with combined prison sentences of 26 years.

The convictions of Kevin Sykes (8 years), Simon Michael Maya (7 years), Ian Selby (4½ years), Altaf Sayed (3½ years) and Trevor Farrell (3 years) for conspiracy to steal £3m from the scheme followed Taylor Wessing and ITS assisting the SFO in providing evidence in support of the prosecutions and, later, to oppose appeals against the convictions.

Since October 2000, Taylor Wessing has been advising ITS on tracing and recovering the scheme assets.  Approximately £1.3m has been recovered as a result of court actions, the sale of assets purchased by the former trustees and settlements reached with third parties.  In addition, a successful application was made to the Pensions Compensation Board, the result of which was that it made its largest payment ever in December 2004.

SFO Assistant Director, Philip Blakebrough, who was the senior case lawyer on the prosecutions said: "this was a callous and ruthlessly executed fraud designed from the start to steal the Cheney Pension Fund by setting up a system of puppet trustees who instead of protecting the fund helped to plunder it."

The ITS team was led by its Managing Director, Chris Martin, and Hetal Kotecha.  Nick Moser, partner in Taylor Wessing's Reconstruction and Corporate Recovery Group, led the Taylor Wessing team which comprised lawyers from the litigation, pensions, real estate and insolvency groups, including Neil Smith, Carolyn Saunders, Mark Smith (pensions), Alison Goldthorp and Claire Martin-Royle (litigation and corporate recovery).