The Deborah Annells saga continues with another of her clients taking out a High Court writ against her for a sum of £1 million (HK$12.1 million).
According to the writ, filed by solicitors Wilkinson & Grist on behalf of the plaintiffs Edward Brian Nicol and Charlene Marianne Nicol, Annells allegedly failed to transfer funds from their trust to investment managers in Britain.
The statement of claims also says that Annells sent forms and a letter to the plaintiff's solicitor that purported to show she had transferred the funds via HSBC. However, when these were sent to the bank for verification, HSBC replied: "We do not have any record of having issued any of the [said] documents."
Annells is a Hong Kong-based tax consultant and the founder and managing director of AzureTax. In July she was found to have committed six instances of dishonesty by the disciplinary tribunal of Britain's Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) and was expelled.
The tribunal said that she had dishonestly used trust funds of HK$5.2 million to make payments that were not in the beneficiaries' interests, she had failed to separate and maintain bank accounts belonging to AzureTax Group and client funds, and she sought to deceive a solicitor acting for one of the trusts managed by one of her companies by "relying on a bank statement which she knew or ought have known was forged". Annells denies she has been dishonest.
The claim says the plaintiffs set up a trust scheme with Annells in March this year and paid in £500,000 each. Under the terms of the scheme the funds in the trust would be managed by Bloomsbury, a branch of British company Raymond James Investment Services UK which opened a nominee account with Pershing Securities in April so that the trust funds could be transferred to this account and invested.