Swallow said HMRC had “picked up on an administrative error on the part of the independent administrators” of the trust, “and as a result of that administrative error, the scheme has been temporarily suspended while the error is cleared up…which we expect to be shortly”.
He stressed that the trust has not lost its QROPS status as a result of the suspension, and that Evergreen would work with HMRC “to demonstrate that we are in full compliance with our requirements as a QROPS”.
The suspension took effect from 19 November, when the error was spotted, Swallow said.
Swallow said Evergreen was “pleased” by the “robustness of HMRC QROPS procedures in picking up this error early”.
The Evergreen Retirement Trust is administered by Wellington, NZ-based Trustees Executors Ltd.
News of the suspension of the Evergreen Retirement Trust coincided with the restoration to the HMRC QROPS list of another overseas pension entity, the MCT Malta Private Retirement Scheme, which, as reported, had been “temporarily suspended” in October as a result of what MC Trustees founder and managing director Martin Cadman said at the time had been “a technical issue”.
To see the current HMRC QROPS list, with the MCT Malta Retirement Scheme added back and the Evergreen scheme absent, click here.
