BOPEU partner in money laundering links
Staff Writer | Friday March 19, 2021 23:20
Monakwe last week unveiled CredInvest International of Malta as the union’s funding partner who will be putting up some 5, 000 units of town houses and a state-of-the-art mall for BOPEU members at affordable rentals.
However, it would seem due diligence was thrown out of the window or slipped through someone’s fingers when the choice of the investor was made. Information unearthed by ICIJ reveals that the company and its sole face, Alain Mangion of Malta, are suspicious money laundering entities.
In the findings, CredInvest and its owner are reflected in the money laundering papers as using their identities to offer complex company secretarial services to help suspected money launderers, politically exposed persons, and tax evaders to set up shelf companies in Malta through a complex web of layers in an effort to conceal the beneficial persons behind those ownerships.
In particular, the investigations revealed that CredInvest International and its sole owner Alain Mangion, appear in not less than 28 different shady companies as sharesholders, secretaries, legal representatives, making it near impossible for anyone to tell from the papers who really owns the companies.
A chunk of his clients have been exposed as coming from Italy, where earlier this year Mangion announced that a tech startup company had appointed him to its board.
While CredInvest and its CEO present themselves as enigmas on their website as well as mentioning that they operate from Italy and England, the investigations have unearthed that they never actually established themselves in the United Kingdom where online corporate trackers have linked them to six shelf companies between 2000 and 2015 including Cred Invest, all of them currently listed as inactive, while another online corporate tracker has exposed CredInvest as a one-employee company that generates a paltry $83, 572 in sales, far from the multi billion dollars dripping juggernaut.
Meanwhile, a global data base website in the UK lists CredInvest International as dissolved, or non-existent after it was incorporated in 2015 as a one man’s show.
The UK Global data website, just like the Offshore Leaks, unmasks Cred Invest International and its owner as nothing more than specialising in setting up of holding companies, far from the picture of the flashy funders awash with billions of dollars the company purports to be.
Curiously, despite claiming to be amongst the world’s leading multi-billion funding institutions, CredInvest on its website does not publish its financial reports.
In fact, there is no single link to the financial reports online despite claiming that it uses billions, and billions of investors and financial institutions to fund projects. Curiously too, it is only in Botswana where the company has managed to garner genuine media coverage, thanks to the well-publicised housing deal with BOPEU.
Besides Botswana media, the only other news about Cred Invest International and its CEO is reported by itself on its website without any links to media reports while a Youtube video link purporting to be the link to its CEO’s interview with some obscure UK channel returns a blank.
Mangion made news in 2008 when as ambassador of his country to Romania, he was found to have won a tender to provide consultancy services to his host government, a behaviour which was condemned by Romanian media as corrupt, forcing Mangion to resign from his appointment.
Online record also reveals that his company once set up a company towards raising capital towards the construction of Turkey football club, Galatasaray, a project which flopped. Then, there is its CEO in Botswana going by the name Lawrence Larson on Linkedin and in local media interviews.
At Company Registration his full names are Lawrence Ampene Larson Darko, of Ghana. Much does not appear online in Ghana or anywhere else about Lawrece Ampene Larson Darko since he featured in Ghanian media five years ago, revealed as a Russian based Ghana DJ, who at the time made news as he sued a fellow Ghanian musician Sarkodie for cancelling a music show.