Dubai: Valany Cardozo Lemos, wife of the owner of dubious forex investment firm Exential, has made a desperate appeal urging clients to give her husband Sydney Lemos “one last chance” and “stop wasting money on lawyers” by filing court cases against him.
Nearly 7,000 UAE residents, mostly working in the aviation and oil and gas sectors, lost their life’s savings in the scam. Hundreds have moved court.
The company’s Dubai Media City office was shut down by authorities in July 2016.
Sydney Lemos, 36, from Goa, India, was arrested in December 2016 for running a Dh1.1 billion Ponzi scheme in the guise of a foreign currency exchange investment programme.
He was released on bail, but taken into custody a second time in mid-January. He has been in jail since.
Fantastic returns promised
His Exential Group promised up to 120 per cent annual returns on investments, but when payments dried up, many investors complained following which the firm’s Dubai Media City office was shut down by the Department of Economic Development in Dubai (DED) in July 2016.
In a six-minute long audio message WhatsApped to clients on Sunday from India, a woman claiming to be Valany said: “the only person who could return their money is Sydney”, who is currently in the custody of Dubai Police at Al Barsha police station.
“Putting civil cases is not helping anyone... he [Sydney] has given a statement to the authorities that he is ready to help and will return everyone’s money. So why do you need lawyers, why do you need investigators? Let them stop ripping you off. I don’t want to see you all losing more money... even the lawyer... everyone is at the mercy of Sydney. So why are you taking the long cut [route] when you have the short cut to get your money back?” Valany said.
Gulf News cannot independently verify the identity of the speaker in the audio message, although those associated with Valany said it’s indeed her voice.
Valany said her main concern was to get her husband out of prison.
“He wants to get his respect back and he can do that only after he returns everyone’s money which he is capable of.”
She said her husband never intended to cheat anyone and could have run away from the country if he wanted as his passport was with him till recently.
She claimed that Sydney had been trying “very hard” to sort out things.
“A man like him who has run the business for almost six years wouldn’t want it to just go in vain. He is capable of returning everyone’s money, but he needs a little bit of understanding and a little bit of patience. I know some of you might say ‘Oh, how much more patience?’, but he is human. He has earned [profits for] so many accounts for five years. He has been transferring more than Dh50 million per month to clients as profits. If he was a cheat he would have put all of that in his pocket by just declaring small profits, but he didn’t do that.
“He is here, he is not going to run away. We just need some understanding and some cooperation from all of you.”
However, investors are far from convinced.
“This is just a ploy to stop people from filing cases against the company,” said Dubai-based Syrian hairstylist Rafi Zazza, who lost Dh640,000 which he had borrowed from relatives.
“I find it very upsetting because the message makes no mention of where they have kept all the money.”
An Abu-based Indian executive who has filed a civil case to recover investments worth $100,000 termed the message as emotional blackmail.
“We are not at the mercy of Sydney as his wife would want us to believe. It’s the other way round,” said the man who had four accounts of $25,000 each in the company.
