A conman is in the wind after failing to appear in the UK High Court to face charges he offered investors the opportunity to put money into a non-existent property development in Brazil.
Anthony Jon Domingo Armstrong-Emery was given the 14-year ban on 15 March 2019 in absentia.
According to the UK Insolvency Service, Armstrong-Emery is currently of ‘no known address’, but has links to an address in Gibraltar.
The scam
Armstrong-Emery and his solicitor colleague Charles Valentine Fraser-Macnamara were directors of Ecohouse Developments Ltd.
Set up in May 2010, it offered investments in the construction of social housing in Brazil.
People would typically pay £23,000 ($29,917, €26,698) per unit and expected to receive their capital plus a 20% return 12 months later.
Marketing material and contracts claimed Ecohouse owned the land the housing was being built on.
Additionally, investors were told their money was secure, as there was an exit strategy backed by the government.
But discontent rumbled to the surface in May 2013, with concerns about the firm being posted online.
By January 2015, Ecohouse was placed into liquidation as it could not pay its debt. It owed around £21m to more than 350 investors.
An Insolvency Service investigation was subsequently triggered.
No evidence
Fraser-Macnamara has since been struck off and accepted a nine-year ban in January 2017 for his misconduct in running the company.
But Armstrong-Emery chose to dispute the allegations.
The court, however, upheld that there was no evidence to show Ecohouse owned the land and that marketing materials were misleading and inaccurate.
The court also heard that the two directors had not maintained adequate records and did not hand them over to the liquidators.
As a result, the liquidators were unable to explain several substantial transactions including payments to Armstrong-Emery worth more than £450,000.
Also, foreign payments totalling over £11m, credit card payments worth more than £1m and payments connected to an unnamed company worth £2.8m could not be accounted for.
