Three Merrion Reinsurance executives will appear in Southwark Crown Court on November 8 to face charges of conspiracy to defraud.
Merrion's managing director Darren Louis Thomas and former employees Leslie Gerald Hursey and David Graham Da Costa were charged on July 19 by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) with falsely representing that Tower Risk Management was an authorised agent of Italian insurer SIAC Assicurazioni. All three are expected to enter a plea of not guilty.
Tower Risk Management is a London subsidiary of Dublin-based Merrion.
The three were also charged with falsely representing that the risks to be insured were 100% underwritten by SIAC, that SIAC was authorised to underwrite in this jurisdiction and that SIAC documents “evidenced good and valid” insurance policies.
The SFO alleges the fraud was committed between July 1996 and February 1998, in collaboration with a Merrion director based in Belgium, Francois Verakaeran.
A trial date has not yet been fixed.
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