A Tel Aviv district court has appointed a temporary liquidator for online broker UTrade today, according to Israeli business newspaper Globes. As we reported on Tuesday, the firm is challenged by ponzi allegations made against it which resulted in the suspension of all of its investment activities.
The court was jointly discussing today two separate liquidation requests filed against UTrade out of fear the firm will try to hide away its remaining capital. One request was filed by an investor along with an Algo Trading robot supplier and another by two other investors. The investors' lawyers asked that the requests be handled separately as they think the robot supplier has a conflict of interests in the case. The robot supplier's lawyer said that with his intimate familiarity with UTrade he can help the liquidator.
During the discussion, the company's lawyer said that he has had no recent contact with the brokerage’s missing owner and CEO, Aviv Talmor, and that he is not UTrade's representative for the case. He replied to the court: "I had contact until recently and if he wants to, he knows how to get me. I agreed to do a final consultation for the firm." The lawyer did reveal that Talmor is aware of the requests and the damning Israeli Securities Authority report: "The response I filed was approved by the owner. I sent the liquidation requests to the owner's email. I got a phone call from his wife last night, she got the requests."
In similar news out of the country, we reported yesterday that a class action was filed against USG Capital – Israel for a total of NIS 70 million (about USD 18 million) for unlicensed investment activities.
