Cash recovery for a pension fund

The situation

During Q2 of 2018, we started a forensic examination of a staff pension fund. Loans had been transferred to an unquoted small company. This meant that almost the entire staff pension scheme had been invested in junk bonds – credit to a non-investment grade corporate entity. We sought a copy of the mortgage lien over the underlying assets, financial accounts, managers’ performance report, and copies of the individual reports provided to over a dozen PAYE workers that presaged the investment.

Our results

Our objective was to determine the financial performance of the borrower and establish a file of key documents for the staff. Our initial enquiries were met by solicitor’s letters denying access to these documents, thus escalating matters. It took a lot of work, but by the end of the summer we had secured the return of 100% of the cash, close to €900,000, fully restoring the Staff Pension Scheme in conservative funds administered by a major Life Office.