After being howled down for weeks as I tried to present this...

After being howled down for weeks as I tried to present this very scenario to you, now that your attention is focussed, allow me to again offer up my thoughts about the situation. This time people, try not to hurl abuse.

I don’t believe Condor set out to deceive or do anything underhanded and I believe they approached this deal in good faith. However, as many of you are now starting to realise now that you’re doing the research I begged you to do weeks ago, Masafin seems to be a front for an elaborate deception.

Deceptions like this prey on the desperate… in some cases it’s lonely hearts and in other cases it’s companies that have exhausted all avenues of funding and are hanging on by a fingernail. Hey presto… in rides the white knight waving a 10 million Euro bond to save them. The victim is desperate; their judgement is clouded… this is the golden ticket. You get invited to Zurich, that crossroad of international diplomacy and banking, to finalise the deal. Your suspicions are not raised when instead of meeting at the bank premises, you instead meet with ‘representatives’ at an offsite location.

The paperwork is in order BUT, there are some up-front fees that need to be paid. Not insignificant either, but this is after all 10 million Euros so that is to be expected. So the fees are paid... you need this finance. A few days go by… all good… except for a minor hiccup that will require a further fee. Then, no matter how close the deal seems, there always seems to be another hurdle and another fee. Eventually these fees add up and you don’t have the money, so you need to raise capital… an unexpected share issue… we need the money and we need it urgently. Done, signed, hands shaken, “we’ll be back in touch in a few days” they say.

But the phone doesn’t ring. Emails are not answered. You do a search for this Mrs. Bravo Carrillo Nancy Anabel that signed the Masafin documents… no record of her. Then that feeling stirs in the pit of your stomach. Like a gambler who was banking on one big payday to return the money they lifted from the till but watched red come up when they had the lot on black. It’s sickening… you want to vomit because the realisation hits that the money’s gone, along with the bank’s ‘representatives’.

Then, to ensure you cannot get onto the front foot, they strike first, ensuring the world believes it was YOU who engaged in the deception.

It was always going to end in tears, they just didn’t know it at the time.