The Radio 4 show was broadcast twice over the weekend, and is still available to listen to online at www.bbc.co.uk.
Noting that the company had filed for administration earlier in the week, Money Box presenter Paul Lewis said in his introduction to the Harlequin segment that thousands of investors had bought Harlequin property "in exotic locations like St Vincent… on the promise of high returns, but many units are yet to be built.
“A lot of Harlequin customers used their pension savings to invest in the scheme, and are concerned that the promised returns may not now materialise.
"Some investors wonder if the advice they were given about transferring money from lower risk funds into higher risk overseas property investments was sound.”
In his report, Money Box reporter Phil Kemp said that there were thought to be around 3,000 Harlequin investors who had put "something like £250m" into the scheme, attracted to it by "a number of high-profile" celebrity endorsements — and evidently not put off, or else unaware, of the fact that the chairman of the business was "a twice bankrupt former double glazing salesman".
Now, though, as many of the investors are starting to worry about what’s happened to their money, questions are being asked in particular about the fact that some were advised to use their pension savings to invest in the scheme, Kemp went on.
He interviewed one Harlequin investor, Erica Broughton, whose husband, he said, had been "encouraged to put £38,000" into a Harlequin project in the Caribbean by a financial adviser back in 2009.
The project was supposed to have been completed by last March, Broughton said, but, she added, "nothing at all has been built".
"We don’t have a life at all now," she added, explaining how the matter had affected her and husband.
As reported, the BBC’s investigative television news show, Panorama, had been scheduled to air a segment on Harlequin last month, but it was postponed at the last minute and thus far has not been rescheduled. It later emerged that the show’s producer had been suspended following a complaint, and he subsequently resigned, amid allegations that an attempt had been made to bribe a Harlequin employee.
Celebrity endorsements
Investors began piling into Harlequin in 2009, 2010 and 2011, in response to marketing campaigns featuring such celerities as tennis pro Pat Cash, golfer Gary Player, and footballer Andy Townsend, and lured by "artists impressions" of newly-built resort facilities surrounded by swimming pools and palm trees.
Resorts in the Harlequin portfolio included Buccament Bay in St Vincent, and Merricks Resort in Barbados.
The Financial Services Authority issued an alert on Harlequin in January, and on 1 March, contacted providers of self-invested personal pensions (Sipps), asking them to say whether they had any clients invested in the firm, which it said is not FSA regulated. On 5 March, the Serious Fraud Office and Essex police launched a joint investigation into complaints relating to Harlequin.
Through a spokesman, Harlequin has refuted the allegations of wrong-doing that the Panorama journalists were understood to have been looking into, and has said it regarded the FSA request for information from advisers as “merely a fact-finding exercise… to determine the level of investment in Harlequin".
