The FCA will continue its attempts to return money to investors who deposited their money in unlawful schemes after The High Court ordered three men to pay the regulator pay £115m.
Back in 2010 a High Court judge told Kautilya Nandan Pruthi to pay £89.8m, John Anderson £13.2m and Kenneth Peacock £11.6m to the FSA, the FCA's predecessor, after the three individuals accepted deposits without its authorisation.
The FSA said Pruthi offered investors a return of between 4% and 20% a month on short-term fixed deposits of between four weeks and a year, while Anderson and Peacock promised slightly lower rates and passed on their deposits to Pruthi.
Although the regulator has aimed from the outset of the ruling to retrieve as much money as possible for return to the investors involved with the scheme it said it was unlikely that they would be repaid in part or at all.
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There was another High Court judgment relating to the case earlier that year, which ruled that Pruthi, Anderson and Peacock, trading as Business Consulting International, John Anderson Consulting and Kenneth Peacock Consulting, were unlawfully accepting deposits from UK consumers.
As Anderson, Peacock and Pruthi and their firms were not approved or authorised by the FSA, investors were not be able to claim compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or have their dispute settled by the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Margaret Cole, former director of enforcement and financial crime at the FSA, said at the time: ''This case again emphasises the importance of taking care to ensure that any firm or individual that consumers deal with are authorised or approved by the FSA."
The FCA today appealed to anyone who invested in one of the schemes and has not yet provided details to it to complete a questionnaire and return it by no later than by Tuesday 19 August 2014 to:
Unauthorised Business Department – KW
Financial Conduct Authority
Freepost London 13176
London
E14 5BR