00:01Well, the first Guardian fund collapsed and that affected about 6,000 investors who lost
00:09about $500 million.
00:12What these investors had done was that they moved their entire retirement savings out
00:18of APRA regulated funds into this managed investment scheme, the first Guardian managed
00:24investment scheme, and they were lured in with promises of very high returns.
00:31Of course, those returns never surfaced.
00:34The fund collapsed and now the corporate regulator ASIC is chasing a host of people, of course
00:41the people that run the funds, the people that marketed the funds, the financial advisors
00:46that lured people into these investments, as well as the superannuation platforms that
00:53house people's investments.
00:55There's already been deals that the corporate watchdog has done with these super platforms
01:00to try and recover some money, but a lot of First Guardian investors are still waiting to
01:07recruit their retirement savings.
01:09And the latest update from the liquidators isn't good news.
01:12What are they saying?
01:13No, Ros, it's quite dire reading.
01:15Basically, of that $500 million or so that is owing to investors, they have said that $8 million
01:25has been allocated so far, but as in assets have been recovered.
01:32But in terms of the rest, they're very unsure as to how much they can recover.
01:37They're discovering that a lot of the money was sent offshore into overseas investments, into
01:45investments that are just not secure.
01:47They've not given a timeframe to investors as to when they can recover their money.
01:52And a lot of investors are obviously very nervous that they may never get their retirement
01:57savings back.
01:58So is there any other way investors can get compensation, Nassim?
02:02There is.
02:03There's something called the compensation scheme of last resort.
02:07This was set up after the Banking Royal Commission to compensate victims of financial misconduct.
02:14The problem is that that scheme is capped at $150,000 per claim.
02:20Now a lot of people in this First Guardian case have lost well over that.
02:26Some people put hundreds of thousands of their retirement savings.
02:29Some people put over a million dollars of their retirement savings.
02:33So you can imagine that only trying to claim $150,000 back is not going to put them into the
02:41position that they were before they moved their savings into these funds.
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