The Serious Fraud Office (SFO), together with Essex Police, is looking into complaints by investors in relation to the Harlequin Property Group. The business activity of Harlequin includes the marketing, sale and construction of luxury off-plan residential property developments in the Caribbean and other overseas resort locations. If you have invested in any of the Harlequin schemes, then the SFO are welcoming any information from investors. The SFO say on their website that they are particularly interested in hearing from people who invested with Harlequin in the following resort development projects:

(1) Buccament Bay in St Vincent & the Grenadines;
(2) Merricks in Barbados;
(3) Marquis Estate in St Lucia;
(4) The Hideaway in the Dominican Republic;
(5) Las Canas in the Dominican Republic;
(6) Two Rivers in the Dominican Republic and
(7) Garapua Beach Resort in Brazil.

You can check for ongoing news in the investigation into Harlequin by checking the SFO website at www.sfo.gov.uk/our-work/our-cases/case-progress/harlequin-property

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) had also recently issued an alert on the 18 th January warning financial advisers about “making recommendations towards their clients to invest large sums into self-invested personal pensions in overseas property bought by Harlequin Property”. The regulator published the alert saying that it has seen an increasing number of Sipp schemes invested in property via Harlequin. However it also stated that although the company (Harlequin) is a UK-based overseas property sales agent it is not regulated by the FSA.