For more than a decade, an investment model based on the appreciation of wines and spirits attracted thousands of investors, including around 500 Portuguese. The promise was simple: invest a minimum of 5,000 euros and wait for the future resale of bottles considered rare or luxury, with annual returns above 10 percent.
The sudden closure of the company responsible for this business, OenoFuture Limited, exposed profound weaknesses in the model presented to customers. Without access to their investments and without proof of the existence of assets, many investors realized that the capital invested could be irretrievably lost.
Model based on trust and distance
According to the newspaper Correio da Manhã, the company was based in London and presented itself as a broker specializing in the purchase and sale of fine wines and rare whiskeys, promoting the idea of an exclusive market that was not accessible to the general public.
According to the same source, investors never got to see the bottles purchased, and it was explained to them that the assets were stored in an international warehouse, allowing successive transactions without physical contact with the product.
Where would the promised assets be?
The newspaper writes that the bottles were allegedly deposited at the London City Bond, a large warehouse next to the River Thames that functions as a free zone, avoiding taxation until the products were sold. The publication adds that this system allowed profits to result only from the change of ownership of the bottles, without them leaving the warehouse or being delivered to investors.
The problems became more evident in 2023, when the company recorded a significant drop in annual revenue. According to the same source, this decrease will have been around seven million euros compared to the previous year.
In this context, the company’s executive director, Michael Doerr, resigned from his role, at a time when several investors began to request the redemption of capital or the formal identification of assets in his name.
Non-existent bottles and duplicate sales
According to the same newspaper, it was at this stage that some customers realized that there was no record of bottles associated with their investments in the London City Bond. In certain cases, there are suspicions that the same barrel of whiskey has been sold several times to different investors, raising doubts about the real existence of the products transacted.
The company closed its activity a few days before Christmas, no longer responding to contacts and communications. Those responsible disappeared, without providing clarifications to investors.
According to the same source, what for years was presented as a solid investment came to be seen as a possible pyramid scheme, whose sustainability depended on the constant entry of new customers.
According to , complaints have already been filed with the Judiciary Police (PJ) in Portugal, although the processes are being forwarded to the British authorities, namely to the fraud department of the English police.
The publication adds that Portuguese investors lost amounts between 5,000 and 100,000 euros per person, now admitting strong reservations about the possibility of recovering the money invested.
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