The unregulated collective investment scheme was marketed as being “low risk” by EEA Fund Management (Guernsey) Ltd, "designed to achieve a benchmark net return of 8% per annum".
But the UK Financial Conduct Authority considered it a high-risk investment that should not have been sold to ordinary investors.
It is believed that a number of elderly expats are among the thousands who did invest.
Now a December deadline looms for investors to lodge mis-selling complaints if the advice to invest came from a UK regulated financial adviser and to claim for the return of their original investment as well as compensation.
The FCA said: "In some cases the deadline for making complaints or claims may start to expire from December 1 2014 onwards. The deadline will vary and will depend on the facts and circumstances of each case – particularly when the sale or advice occurred and when the investor realised there was a problem."
The fund was suspended in 2011 after "unprecedented" levels of redemption requests which arose after the Financial Services Authority (which preceded the FCA) said it would try to ban the sale and marketing of traded life policy investments to retail investors – which it subsequently did.
An action group, the EEA Investors’ Group, claims that people are getting their money very slowly and fears that a number of elderly investors will not live long enough to see all of it returned.
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There is also an urgent deadline of 28th November 2014 for holders of EEA "Continuing" shares to claim a redemption of up to 5% of their shares for payment in January 2015. For more details and forms, see the above website.
NOTE : If the shares are held via platforms or nominees then you must contact them and they will have to submit the request to EEA by the deadline.