OffshoreAlert, November 30, 2000

Insider Talking column

We recently contacted Bill Wallace, of Pannell Kerr Forster, in Nassau to ask how his accounting firm was able to perform a competent audit of several Bahamas and Grenada-registered mutual funds operated by the Imperial Consolidated Group when the BVI-registered companies upon which the funds' solvency entirely depends do not appear to be audited. Wallace at first tried to fob us off by asking us to call Imperial Consolidated instead of him but we persisted and managed to persuade him to accept a fax from us containing several questions, giving him three weeks to respond. Alas, the November 15, 2000 deadline came and went without any reply. We have filed our fax away should it ever be needed in the event of possible legal proceedings if Imperial Consolidated eventually goes pear-shaped, like several other firms run by Lincoln Fraser and Jared Brook. The high yields offered by Imperial Consolidated do nothing to dissuade cynics.