An investor gave evidence on the second day of the Lumiere Wealth trial on Wednesday; claiming the advice firm’s founder, Chris Byrne, made her sign an unsecured personal loan agreement for £1m ($1.27m, €1.12m).
In a trial that is expected to last six weeks, Byrne is facing 18 charges, all of which he denies.
According to an article in newspaper the Jersey Evening Post, the court heard evidence from an elderly woman who suffers from macular degeneration, a condition that causes severe, irreversible vision loss.
She claims Byrne had her sign an unsecured personal loan agreement to him for £1m when she believed she was authorising the money be transferred into a bond.
House visit
The woman, who uses a magnifying glass to read, said she signed the agreement when Byrne was visiting her at home.
“We talked about the day. We had a glass of wine and suddenly he got up and said: ‘I’m very late. Look at the time. I have to meet my wife and children. I want some signatures’.
“And with that he put three white sheets of paper on the coffee table in my study and said: ‘I will show you where to sign’.
“There were lines on them and the words date and signature. He said: ‘Sign here, here and here’. He started talking so fast and slick that I just couldn’t keep up with it. I hardly knew what I was doing. He said he could fill the rest in when he got back.
“The next thing I know was there was this ridiculous paper that said I had given him a personal loan,” the Jersey Evening Post reports.
When questioned what happened to the £1m, the woman said “it has been stolen”, and she had “no idea” where it had gone.
The woman has also claimed she lost £600,000 because her money was invested by Lumiere, without her knowledge, in a high-risk Brazilian factoring scheme run by Providence Global.
