Goodday,
I am David Palmer, staff of SMITH & WILLIAMSON Private Banking.I am
contacting you concerning a deceased customer and an investment he placed
under our banks management three years ago.I
would respectfully request that you keep the contents of this mail
confidential and respect the integrity of the information you come by as a
result of this mail.
I contacted you independently of our investigation and no one is informed
of this communication. I would like to intimate you with certain facts that
I believe would be of interest to you.In 2000,the subject matter; came to
our bank to engage in business discussions with our private banking
division. He informed us that he had a financial portfolio of Thirty
million united states dollars,which he wished to have us turn over (invest)
on his behalf.I was the officer assigned to his case, I made numerous
suggestions in line with my duties as the de-facto chief operations officer
of the private banking sector, especially given the volume of funds he
wished to put into our bank. We met on numerous occasions prior to any
investments being placed. I encouraged him to consider various growth funds
with prime ratings. The favored route in my advise to customers is to start
by assessing data on 6000 traditional stocks and bond managers and 2000
managers of alternative investments. Based on my advice, We spun the money
around various opportunities and made attractive margins for our first
months of operation, the accrued profit and interest stood at this point at
over ten million United States Dollars, this margin was not the full
potential of the fund but he desired low risk guaranteed returns on
investments. In mid 2001, he asked that the money be liquidated because he
needed to make an urgent investment requiring cash payments in here in the
united kingdom. He directed that I liquidate the funds and deposit it with
a security firm. I informed him that SMITH & WILLIAMSON would have to make
special arrangements to have this done and in order not to circumvent due
process, the bank would have to make a 9.5 % deduction from the funds to
cater for banking and statutory charges. He complained about the charges
but later came around when I explained to him the complexities of the task
he was asking of us. Cash movement across boarders has become especially
strict since the incidents of 9/11. I contacted my affiliate and made the
funds available to the security firm.
I undertook all the processes and made sure I followed his precise
instructions to the letter and had the funds deposited with the security
firm. The Security Firm is a specialist private firm that accepts deposits
from high net worth individuals and blue chip corporations that handle
valuable products or undertake transactions that need immediate access to
cash. This small and highly private organization is familiar especially to
the highly placed and well-connected organizations. In line with
instructions, the money was deposited with the security firm.The deceased
told me he wanted the money there in anticipation of his arrival from
Norway later that week. This was the last communication we had, this
transpired around 25th February 2003.In June last year, we got a call from
the security firm informing us that the inactivity of that particular
portfolio.This was an astounding position as far as I was concerned, given
the fact that I managed the private banking sector I was the only one who
knew about the deposit at the security firm, and I could not understand
why the deceased had not come forward to claim his deposit. I made futile
efforts to locate the deceased. I immediately passed the task of locating
him to the internal investigations department of SMITH & WILLIAMSON.Four
days later, information started to trickle in,apparently our client was
dead. A person who suited his description was declared dead of a heart
attack in Canne, South of France.
We were soon enough able to identify the body and cause of death was
confirmed.The bank immediately launched an investigation into possible
surviving next of kin to alert about the situation and also to come forward
to claim his estate. If you are familiar with private banking affairs,
those who patronize our services usually prefer anonymity,but also some
levels of detachment from conventional processes. In his bio-data form, he
listed no next of kin. In the field of private banking, opening an account
with us means no one will know of its existence, accounts are rarely held
under a name;depositors use numbers and codes to make the accounts
anonymous.This bank also gives the choice to depositors of having their
mail sent to them or held at the bank itself, ensuring that there are no
traces of the account and as I said, rarely do they nominate next of kin.
Private banking clients apart from not nominating next of kin
