A court yesterday heard more salacious details of the conman who managed to fleece Dutch shipping line Allseas out of $105m posing as the Pope’s banker.
Luis Nobre, one of a gang of conmen claiming to be international financiers with access to a secret trading platform in the Vatican, was found guilty on different fraud-related crimes at a UK court hearing yesterday. The trial has overrun by three months.
Prosecutor David Durose said: “Allseas were seeking to raise capital in order to fund the building of a new ship and had available the enormous sum of EUR100m to invest… Ultimately it is clear that the individuals who ended up advising them were not the international financiers that Allseas thought they were.”
Durose recounted how Allseas lost control of the entire sum of EUR100m although they did not realise they had been defrauded for some time as they were led to believe the money was still in the process of being invested on their behalf.
Nobre was introduced to Allseas senior management as an ‘A1’ trader with links to the US Federal Reserve as well as a secret trading platform connected to the Vatican via the Spanish royal family.
Co-defendant, London based solicitor Buddika Kadurugamuaw, 46, was found guilty of helping the gang launder £111,400 of cash.
The gang’s leader Marek Rejniak is on the run.
Nobre will be sentenced today while Kadurugamuwa’s sentence will be revealed on March 4.
