The FCA has banned Andrew Currie and Peter Currie, who ran a P2P lender which was never authorised by the FCA. They had claimed it was authorised with interim permission, but in fact Peter Currie had fraudulently changed the FCA register to show that an interim permission held by another company of which he was a director was in fact held by Collateral.
Collateral went into administration in 2018, with over 1,000 in investors with outstanding loans totalling almost £18m.
When the FCA discovered the fraudulent registration, Andrew Currie extracted assets from the firm for his own benefit, continuing to extract funds and “broker fees” despite having given undertakings not to dissipate the firm’s assets. The brothers were convicted in 2023, of fraud offences and converting criminal property and were disqualified from acting as a company directors.
The FCA as as a result decided neither is a fit and proper person to perform any function related to any regulated activity.