The Creditors’ Committee has published an extremely critical letter in relation to a poll which saw ALL creditors and policyholders vote to remove the Deloittes Joint Provisional Liquidators due to serious concerns.
Appointed in November 2023 by the Court in Bermuda, the Deloittes JPL’s have made little to no progress in nearly 3 years. In addition, the JPL’s managed to alienate Joakim Samuelsson, ultimate owner of Custodian Life, who had expressed a willingness to resolve GDPR related issues with regards to releasing confidential data to the JPL’s legally.
This would have allowed the JPL’s to have lawful access to client confidential data from the start. However, the JPL’s have committed two serious breaches of GDPR regulations which resulted in complaints from both policyholders and IFAs whose personal data was disclosed publicly.
Joakim Samuelsson, ultimate owner of Custodian Life, was willing to sell a Swedish company to the JPL’s, which would provide them with full ownership of all client confidential data (as well as compliance with EU GDPR).
However, after nine months of negotiations, the JPL’s decided to pursue litigation in Sweden behind Samuelsson’s back, in order to gain access to the data for free. After losing their case in the Swedish courts, the JPL’s were subsequently ordered to pay damages (from Custodian Life’s assets) and therefore denied policyholders access to their own data for at least another twelve months.
Furthermore, the JPL’s ceased payment for the system used to store client data and therefore caused policyholders access to their own data to be taken off-line.
Therefore, despite charging approximately $US 5m for services provided over the last 2.5 years, the JPL’s have achieved nothing for policyholders and have thereby prevented policyholders from accessing their own investments/investment data; as well as having committed two serious breaches of EU GDPR.
At the beginning of 2025, Samuelsson attended meetings with the JPL’s and produced evidence of BMA telephone conversations which demonstrated that Custodian Life was financially sound. The JPL’s did nothing with this information.
Moreover, the JPL’s failed to act against the Insurance Appeals Tribunal when they allegedly acted criminally and refused Custodian Life permission to make an appeal of the Tribunal’s decision which had been made following the BMA failing to respond to Custodian Life’s appeal against the BMA’s arbitrary actions.
Henry Tucker of Harney’s is also alleged to have a conflict of interest in the manner in which he represents the JPL’s. This is the second conflict of interest allegation made against Tucker since Samuelsson claimed that Tucker operated Carey Olsen’s Restructuring Unit and worked on behalf of Custodian Life, prior to resigning in November 2023 and joining Harneys shortly thereafter. The newly formed Harneys immediately began representing the recently appointed JPL’s.
It appears that none of the parties involved (Harneys, the JPLs, the BMA or the Insurance Appeals Tribunal) appear to believe that the rule of law applies to themselves. As a direct consequence, over 2000+ policyholders are suffering and without access to their own investments/financial information for over three years.