Intel Suisse, currently investigating alleged fraud in the St Vincent’s’ registered “The Classic Card Fund”, has now started to investigate a second, related investment fund, “The Classic Investment Fund”.
Both funds (“TCCF” and “CIF”) are in liquidation, since early 2021, and share the same director and investment manager, Italian national Filippo Pignatti-Morano. While Mr Pignatti advertised to the fund community a fund size of approximately € 30 million in April 2017 (EurekaHedge) for TCCF, the fund size was actually just over € 2 million.
CIF was also shrinking in size due to redemption pressure as investors pulled out, and by 2018 was also approximately € 2 million in size. Prior to liquidation CIF effectively had one investment – into TCCF, thus allowing Pignatti to double his management fees and for the same investment in Classic Cars.
Both funds were administered by Fortuna Administration Limited, also registered in St Vincent’s but with no employees or a physical office – from the website www.fortuna.vc investors are transferred to Scarabaeus Wealth Management in Liechtenstein. The administrator is responsible for calculating the value of the fund shares, which with TCCF were allegedly overstated and concealing major asset losses. CIF was paying Fortuna, then a Bulgarian company linked to the directors of Scarabaeus from mid-2017, for the administration services.
The European investors of CIF are facing a major loss of their investments, and as more allegations of fraud and conflict of interest arise, both Pignatti and the Scarabaeus group of related companies and former directors are at the centre of investigation.