The Juicy Fields Saga

In one of the biggest fraud cases of our time, namely ‘Juicy Fields’, which af­fects over 685,000 vic­tims and amounts to dam­ages of ap­prox­im­ately EUR 645 mil­lion, we have now be­gun to take ac­tion against the pay­ment in­sti­tu­tion ISX.

We have sent let­ters of de­mand on be­half of our cli­ents, ac­cus­ing the pay­ment in­sti­tu­tion in ques­tion of in­volve­ment in money laun­der­ing in ac­cord­ance with Sec­tion 261 of the Ger­man Crim­inal Code (StGB). As the dam­age was caused to Ger­man cit­izens and the crime was com­mit­ted in Ger­many, Ger­man law applies.

The let­ters of de­mand have already been sent to the pay­ment in­sti­tu­tion, and we are now wait­ing for a re­sponse within the set dead­line. Once we have re­ceived a re­sponse, we will take fur­ther steps.

Tak­ing ac­tion against a pay­ment in­sti­tu­tion in Cyprus is chal­len­ging – es­pe­cially con­sid­er­ing the lin­guistic and prac­tical hurdles – but we are not alone. We have already con­tac­ted the European Bank­ing Au­thor­ity (EBA), which is au­thor­ised to su­per­vise pay­ment in­sti­tu­tions such as ISX Fin­an­cial EU PLC. We have already re­ceived their re­sponse. They sug­ges­ted that we con­tact the Cent­ral Bank of Cyprus in or­der to suc­cess­fully en­force our cli­ents’ claims. We have already done so and have re­ceived con­firm­a­tion of re­ceipt from the Cent­ral Bank of Cyprus.

One might won­der whether the Cent­ral Bank of Cyprus will side with us, given that it is a pay­ment in­sti­tu­tion based in Cyprus. Here, one must take into ac­count European le­gis­la­tion – in par­tic­u­lar Dir­ect­ive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Par­lia­ment and of the Coun­cil of 20 May 2015 – as well as the role of the European Cent­ral Bank and the Cent­ral Bank of Cyprus.

This dir­ect­ive must be trans­posed into the legal sys­tems of EU Mem­ber States. It ob­liges banks and pay­ment in­sti­tu­tions – such as ISX Fin­an­cial EU PLC – to verify the be­ne­fi­cial own­ers (KYC [Know Your Cus­tomer] check). The check re­quires that the ac­tual per­son be­hind the busi­ness and con­trolling it must be iden­ti­fied. Fur­ther­more, these ob­lig­a­tions do not auto­mat­ic­ally end once the be­ne­fi­cial owner has been iden­ti­fied, but also in­clude the mon­it­or­ing of trans­ac­tions car­ried out. It should be noted that the pay­ment in­sti­tu­tion must now prove that it has taken all ne­ces­sary meas­ures. It is pre­cisely this fact, that the in­sti­tu­tion has a duty to provide evid­ence, that has a be­ne­fi­cial ef­fect on our fur­ther course of action.

The Cent­ral Bank of Cyprus is re­spons­ible for su­per­vising pay­ment in­sti­tu­tions and banks based in Cyprus and is also part of the European Cent­ral Bank, which in turn is au­thor­ised to su­per­vise the cent­ral banks of the Mem­ber States of the European Union.
The so­cial con­sequences must also be taken into ac­count. The pre­ven­tion of money laun­der­ing has been an im­port­ant part of the European de­bate for years, and Dir­ect­ive (EU) 2015/849 re­quires EU mem­ber states to in­cor­por­ate it into their re­spect­ive legal sys­tems and to es­tab­lish trans­par­ency re­gisters to en­sure trans­par­ency in busi­ness re­la­tion­ships. Even the mere sus­pi­cion of money laun­der­ing and the as­so­ci­ated ob­lig­a­tion on banks and pay­ment in­sti­tu­tions to in­vest­ig­ate the facts of the case rep­res­ents a con­sid­er­able burden.

In con­clu­sion, we can say that the situ­ation of the ag­grieved in­vestors will by no means be left un­at­ten­ded, and we eagerly await the fur­ther ac­tion to be taken by ISX Fin­an­cial EU PLC and the Cent­ral Bank of Cyprus.
If you have any ques­tions, please do not hes­it­ate to con­tact us at any time. If you would still like to join the joint ac­tion, you still have the op­por­tun­ity to do so. Fur­ther in­form­a­tion can also be found here.