The organisation says its members alone have lost more than £20 million across 13 schemes with total losses in excess of £2bn.
Angela Brooks, Chairman of ACA Pension Life, said:
“The 800-plus members transferred into 13 different schemes that sunk their pension pots in high-risk ventures in order to ‘liberate’ their funds in a supposedly tax-free way.
“Cumulatively, these people, many of whom were already financially strapped which is why they were able to be conned into liberating their pensions in the first place, have potentially lost retirement funds worth a staggering £2bn.
“Not only are they uncertain whether their hard-earned life savings will ever be even partially recovered, they are now also facing ruinous debts and crippling tax bills.
“The slick, professional fraudsters assured them they could access their pensions tax-free due to a legal loophole. However, this was not the case – and HMRC are in the process of issuing tax demands of 55 per cent.”
Brooks added:
“Indeed, it is my experience that this is a growing problem due to the so-called pension freedoms that were introduced by the government earlier this year.
“Despite the Ark scheme being condemned in the High Court in 2011 as a ‘fraud on the power of investment’, despite handing over hard evidence to the relevant authorities on various scams, and despite more and more people being conned, no deterrents or additional checks have been put in place and not one scammer has been arrested.
“Even if a scheme, such as Ark, is closed, the same fraudsters simply set up another one to con more savers out of millions.
“The government says it is ‘monitoring’ the situation regarding pension liberation scams. It is the responsibility of the government to fix what is a broken system - and be seen to do so publicly.
“The government is ultimately responsible as its agencies – namely HMRC, the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority – are failing in their duties by allowing this scandal to run and run.”
ACA Pension Life is now calling on the government to set up an independent, specialist task force to tackle this problem.
It is also calling for the government to insist that HMRC stops registering pension schemes without due diligence, and for the FCA to look at the "weakness of its regulations".
