I am writing in response to the story about the investment broker who was jailed for two and a half years for selling worthless carbon credits (FA, 18 February).
What kind of sob story about “personal circumstances” can possibly have persuaded the judge to cut this guy’s sentence to just 30 months? With good behaviour, he will probably be out after just 15.
That aside, once again one has to ask just why the FCA is not spending just a small portion of its huge budget on a public awareness campaign to highlight to vulnerable members of the public the manifest dangers of having any dealings whatsoever with some unregulated firm that calls you up out of the blue to talk you into some way off-piste investment proposition.
This is especially so when nobody ever comes to conduct a factfind and nothing is said about the protection afforded by the FSCS. Such scams seem to be happening all the time, yet the FCA is failing totally to do anything about them. Just what kind of consumer protection body can the FCA possibly claim to be when it allows these sort of activities to go on year after year?
Julian Stevens
Financial Adviser,
Harvest,
Bristol
