List of disgruntled fund investors grows to 244

Seventeen investors have filed a judicial protest against Bank of Valletta, claiming irregularities and misconduct by the bank in investment funds, bringing the total number of complainants to 244.

This is the eighth protest filed by disgruntled investors after a number of investment funds went belly up and millions of euros were lost in what they are claiming was a complete mismanagement of a property fund by the bank.

The protest was filed against BOV and La Valette Multi-Manager Property Fund, a sub-fund of La Valette Sicav plc, managed by Valletta Fund Management, a joint venture between BOV and Insight Investment of London.

In the protest filed yesterday, the investors said that although the first investigative report drawn up by the Malta Financial Services Authority into the case was complete following a seven-month long probe, the bank directors’ report was not published and this ran counter to the provisions of the law.

Furthermore, the proposal by the investors to postpone the annual general meeting pending further reports by the MFSA was ignored by the bank and their relative fund managers.

At the annual general meeting, the investors had unanimously voted for the postponing of the meeting but the bank used its majority of the votes to forge ahead. This displayed the Sicav fund directors’ “arrogance and contempt” towards all the investors, they said in the protest.

During the meeting, three resolutions, for the approval of the annual report and financial statements, the appointment and remuneration of the auditors and the re-appointment of the Sicav directors, were unanimously rejected by hundreds of shareholders, they said.

Nonetheless, BOV used its own votes within the fund to get the three resolutions passed and did not explain why it would be supporting the resolutions. This, the investors insisted in their protest, was evidence of lack of transparency.

In previous judicial protests, the investors pointed out that a blind 95-year-old investor who was also hard of hearing and did not know the difference between a share and a bond was made to sign a document declaring he was an experienced investor when he clearly was not. He was also encouraged to invest in the fund.

In the protests, the investors said their complaints centred on the investment of their capital in nine underlying funds they claim were inappropriate vehicles for their investment. In fact, they lost a substantial amount of money due to the mismanagement of the funds, they said.

The latest protest filed was signed by lawyer Ian Refalo.