Police raid insurance agent
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Your support makes all the difference.Police investigating a pounds 100m insurance fraud, which hit Lloyd's syndicates, insurers and brokers in the City, have seized hundreds of documents and computer files from a London insurance agent.
Officers from the Serious Fraud Office, the Metropolitan Police and the Belgian judicial police raided the offices of CRM Insurance Services on Tuesday.
The company provided various management services for the three companies based in Brussels that were at the centre of the fraud for more than five years.
Police also searched the Surrey home of CRM's chairman, Mike Reeve, and a flat belonging to another director, Paul Thomas.
The pair, who have spent their careers in the London insurance market, founded CRM in 1988 after leaving a firm of City insurance brokers.
The raid follows Mr Reeve's detention by Antwerp police last week as he attempted to clear his name by handing over a 300-page dossier.
The dossier names the people he claims are the real villains behind the scam, which fooled leading City firms, auditors, insurers, police and insurance regulators.
From his Antwerp cell, Mr Reeve said that he was horrified at the behaviour of the Belgian police and vowed to protest by exercising his right of silence. "I am not at all interested in either hiding or distorting the truth," he said.
CRM accused the police of heavy-handed tactics, claiming that they had taken a sledgehammer to Mr Thomas's front door, when he was more than willing to co-operate with the investigation.
CRM - which hired and fired staff for Dai Ichi Kyoto, the company at the centre of the fraud, and its sister companies in the heart of the Brussels business district and handled their administration and insurance claims - has denied any knowledge of involvement in fraud.
The company's dossier names five businessmen. They include an accountant, a jet-setting businessman, a company formation agent and an insurance specialist.
It emerged last night that the Belgians have widened their inquiries from Dai Ichi Kyoto to another Belgian reinsurance company.
CRM began representing Koning International Reinsurance after Dai Ichi Kyoto's collapse in late 1995.
Police are examining allegations that, like Dai Ichi, Koning was founded on the back of fictitious assets.
CRM confirmed that the Belgian police are questioning Mr Reeve about a $60,000 (pounds 38,000) loan he made to Koning last year.
The SFO, which organised the raid on behalf of the Belgians, said last night that it was continuing the investigation in close liaison with the Belgian police and prosecutors.
The FBI is carrying out similar investigations into Dai Ichi in the US.
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