The FCA has banned three former senior figures at Dolfin Financial for their role in a scheme that helped clients bypass UK visa rules.
Former chief executive Denisz Nagy has been fined £324,800 and former finance director Sanjay Maraj £122,000 for their roles in the scheme. Both have been banned from working in financial services. The pair agreed to settle and receive a 30% discount, without which their fines would have been £464,000 and £174,300 respectively.
The FCA has also decided to ban Dolfin co-founder, Roman Joukovski, from working in financial services.
The FCA's investigation found that between 2016 and 2019, most clients using the scheme paid a fee of £400,000 instead of investing £2m of their own money in UK companies, as required under the Home Office investor visa rules. The FCA found the scheme was deliberately designed to create the false impression that the visa requirements had been met.
The scheme enabled at least 99 individuals to obtain investor visas and generated at least £35.5m in fees for Dolfin-connected businesses and the immigration agents that introduced clients.
The FCA found that Nagy and Joukovski played leading roles in creating and operating the scheme, while Maraj was responsible for the financial aspects once it was set up. Nagy and Maraj also deliberately concealed its true nature from the FCA and the Home Office.
Joukovski also deliberately concealed from the regulator both his involvement with Dolfin and his role in the scheme. He acted as a shadow director of Dolfin without FCA approval and was a controller of the firm without informing the regulator.
In March 2021 the FCA imposed restrictions on Dolfin to prevent it from carrying on any regulated activities, following a range of regulatory concerns, including its operation of the investor visa funding scheme. Dolfin entered special administration in June 2021, and the insolvency processes remain ongoing.
The Home Office has also acted against many of the clients that used the scheme by refusing their applications for leave to remain and indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
Therese Chambers, joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: "Integrity is not optional in financial services. These individuals ran a scheme designed to get around the UK's investor visa rules, undermining their purpose of attracting genuine investment into the UK.
They then sought to hide how it operated. We will continue to act against those who lack integrity and undermine trust in UK financial services."
Joukovski has referred his Decision Notice to the Upper Tribunal and any findings in his case are therefore provisional pending the determination of the Tribunal.
