Pension fraudsters who cost BOV millions are freed

Two men at the heart of Sweden’s largest pensions fraud crime have been freed from jail – American national Mark Bishop and Swedish conman Max Serwin had used the Maltese financial and banking system to incorporate a fraudulent pensions fund that sucked over €250 million in Swedish pensions’ savings.

The imbroglio cost Bank of Valletta a €26.5 million settlement in 2020 with the Swedish pensions authority, to avoid further litigation on its role as custodian of Falcon Funds.

Falcon Funds was a Swedish private pension run by a Maltese company, but whose investment decisions were vitiated by backroom dealings from its own investment manager, Temple Asset Management.

Serwin, under the alias Emil Ingmanson, was the architect of Falcon Funds, registering it in Malta, but using its pensions savings to invest it in other fraudulent companies for his own benefit.

He was aided by Temple director Anthony John Farrell, whose Malta firm was shuttered and was then extradited to Sweden to face criminal charges. Falcon’s Maltese directors Tonio Fenech, the former Nationalist finance minister, and Ian Zammit and Joseph Xuereb wrere handed a two-year ban from the MFSA on holding approved positions; further court action in Malta was filed by BOV against a host of entities involved in siphoning off cash from the pension fund.

Both Serwin and Bishop are technically liable to pay back $50 million, and interest, in damages for the Falcon Funds fraud.

But Bishop has left Sweden already, departing back to his American homeland, with a 15-year ban on returning to the Scandinavian country. Serwin has been granted parole, having served two-thirds of his eight-year prison sentence.

Prosecutor Jerker Asplund told the Swedish press that millions in cash defrauded from the Falcon Funds pension scheme remain at large. “We can see a lot of money in various places that we cannot access. Whether they go to Max Serwin or not I will leave it unsaid. But there is a lot of money we haven’t traced.”

Asplund said that at least €2.3 million is sitting in a Dubai account linked directly to Serwin, but Sweden lacks the necessary agreements to claim the money back from the UAE.

Another €1 million is said to have been laundered through the Luxembourgish fund Haven Sicav, €2 million in gold was retrieved in Zurich, and another €640,000 was found in a Revolut bank account in London. The gold – 6,800 Swiss gold coins and 30 gold bars – is said to have been laundered by an agent for Serwin, who is now facing charges in Stockholm.

Swedish authorities so far managed to recoup just some €18 million from the stolen funds.