Former employee of Exential claims staff were in the dark about bogus investments

DUBAI // A former employee of Exential, the foreign exchange scheme that promised to double investors’ money, said he was hired with no financial experience and given 500 clients, each with at least one US$20,000 account.

The employee, who was not paid for months and is looking for work after Exential collapsed, said staff had no idea the company was selling bogus investments.

“There were legitimate companies involved in the transactions who, like some of us, had no idea that it was a Ponzi scheme,” the employee said.

“Some brokers and major banks were based in Australia, Mauritius and the British Virgin Islands. When they found out, that is when the operation began to get into real difficulties as they withdrew their services.”

Exential Group in Dubai Media City was ordered to cease trading in July by the Department of Economic Development after scores of complaints by clients that due payments had dried up.

The company promised annual returns of up to 120 per cent, but investors who have tried to close their accounts remain unpaid.

Many investors, who included Emirates airline cabin crew, ploughed their life savings into the fund and took out personal bank loans to invest more.

Money invested was transferred to three companies under the Exential banner – Exential Mideast Commercial Brokers, Exential Mideast Investment and Tadawul ME.

The cash was then transferred to bank accounts in Australia owned by a partner firm.

When those accounts were frozen, investors were told banking compliance problems had delayed their payments, when in fact the scam was beginning to unravel.

“I don’t want to insult cabin crew but this was like a bull race,” the employee said. “When one person opened an account, the rest charged in to open accounts.

“There were people at Emirates who were selling these accounts and making huge monthly commissions from new investors.

“It was not difficult to get people to invest Dh80,000 to open an account. Those who got in early have made their money 10 times over. One introductory broker would get Dh70,000 to Dh80,000 a month in commission by recommending new investors.

“Some people had as many as 500 accounts, chairmen of companies had 300 accounts – there are some heavy investors.

“From January until November 2015 we were opening between 1,000 and 1,200 accounts every month, in total worth about Dh77 million.

“I thought it was a legitimate business and only found out it was a scam in April, 2016.”

In March last year, Exential emailed investors asking them to upgrade their accounts with an additional $5,000 (Dh18,300).

Exential’s bosses needed to generate more cash to ease concerns from those wanting to withdraw their funds due to non-payment of the profits they were promised.

“People had lost their life savings,” the ex-worker said. “When they turned up at the offices some were very aggressive. We called police most days.

“Some people refused to leave the office until they got their money and would just sleep outside. That went on for months.”