Former trust company MD banned from finance

Wednesday 15 February 2017

A local financier who oversaw a £200k film investment fund has been banned from working in the Island’s finance industry.

Gisele Helene Le Miere, the former Managing Director and Money Laundering Reporting Officer of Jordans Trust Company Jersey (JJL), came under fire from the Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC) following a complaint from an individual who had invested around £20,000 into an alleged film investment opportunity, which she had managed during 2013 and 2014. JJL reported the complaint to the JFSC.

The firm, which the JFSC say operated with "cooperation and candour", launched an independent review into the fund, which it then made available to the JFSC. 

The details of the case have been published in a Public Statement issued by the JFSC, which says the 53-year-old’s conduct in relation to the fund to have, “…lacked integrity and competence.”

The JFSC investigation found that Ms Le Miere did nothing to correct inaccurate information provided to JJL’s Board of Directors and the Compliance Committee, and that she had ignored red flags over a party, “…on whom significant adverse information was held, [who] was intrinsically connected to the non-Jersey incorporated company which ultimately received the investor monies.”

This, the JFSC concluded, meant that Ms Le Miere had, “…not given adequate consideration to whether there was a duty of care owed by JJL, as a custodian of the money, to those members of the public who had made investments in relation to the film investment opportunity.”

While she had already stepped down from her job of 10 years in 2014 over the mismanagement, Ms Le Miere has subsequently been banned from future work, “…in or for any business regulated by the JFSC.”