Ahsan Ali Syed has been found guilty and imprisoned for running an advance-fee fraud that cost victims $60 million. Photo / Supplied
Ahsan Ali Syed, who ran a sophisticated and globe-spanning $60 million advance-fee scam that took in some of New Zealand and Australia’s biggest property developers, has been found guilty of fraud and sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
Last week, a judge at the Zurich District Court in Switzerland found Syed, 52, guilty on 14 counts of commercial fraud, and not guilty on two similar charges, after a two-day hearing and a quest for justice that stretched back more than a decade.
The prosecution, and associated recovery action that froze Swiss bank accounts and an apartment beside Lake Geneva, was largely spearheaded by Auckland-based lawyer and former policeman Mark van Leewarden after complaints about Syed’s Western Gulf Advisory (WGA).
Van Leewarden’s firm, Warden Consulting, had been working the case since he was first commissioned by New Zealand businessmen in 2011 seeking to recover millions in upfront loan fees charged by WGA for hundred-million-dollar lines of credit that never eventuated.
Warden has run a number of high-profile and high-value fraud investigation and recovery operations in his 25 years in business but considered collaring Syed the highlight of his career.
“I’d rank it No 1. There’s some good results from bigger cases, but this one was very satisfying,” he said.
“Because it was so difficult and it took so long. He raised every single obstacle that he possibly could to avoid ending up at a substantive hearing.”
Van Leewarden said parallel recovery action against Ali and WGA had recovered $7m, which was distributed in 2022 and gave his clients returns of 18c on the dollar.
“We would regard 10% as a good recovery. So 18% is really good,” he said.
“And then, of course, subsequent to that, he’s arrested and he’s convicted. I suppose it’s a small consolation to the victims, some of them were completely decimated, financially, emotionally and physically.”
Warden said Syed is contesting the guilty verdicts, and the Swiss justice system extends the presumption of innocence until proven guilty until the appeals process is exhausted.
Van Leewarden was unwilling to identify the fraud victim he represented, citing privacy and legal privilege.
Reports from the time WGA was active in 2010-11 reveal Wellington Phoenix owner and Apprentice New Zealand host Terry Serepisos and former NZ Mint owner Gary McNabb were among the New Zealand victims of the multimillion-dollar fraud.
Syed had run a seemingly well-resourced finance operation with lavish offices in Switzerland and Bahrain, and claimed to have $8 billion available in finance.
WGA made generous-looking loan offers to a number of businessmen and developers suffering through the post-Global Financial Crisis credit crunch in 2010-11.
No clients ever received loans, Swiss prosecutors claim, with WGA allegedly just a vehicle to fleece victims.
“[The] sole interest and intention was that these companies would transfer the largest possible sums of money to [Syed] or the Western Gulf Advisory group and that he could use these sums of money to finance a luxurious lifestyle for himself and his family,” the indictment said.
Proceeds were used by Syed to buy a private jet, a football team, and employ a small army of publicists, security guards and assistants. During Serepisos’ struggles against liquidation in late 2010 and 2011, Syed was said to be considering becoming a co-owner of the Wellington Phoenix.
Van Leewarden first became involved chasing Syed by representing McNabb, but over time he signed up other victims – mostly from Australia, but also one in Russia – to broaden the case, split costs and increase possible recoveries.
The trail led from Syed’s birthplace in India to London, where he presented as a finance tycoon and conducted due diligence purportedly considering an offer for English Premier League team Blackburn Rovers.
He spent time in Spain, became a short-lived local hero by buying the ailing La Liga team Racing Santander in 2010, before the team collapsed into bankruptcy once alarms started being sounded about WGA.
Marks were targeted mostly in New Zealand and Australia, typically businessmen down to their last few million and desperate for refinancing. Contracts were signed in Bahrain and Amsterdam before money was sent to Switzerland.
The multiple jurisdictions made it difficult for any single national authority to take responsibility for the case, van Leewarden said.
“That’s the way that they operate, and generally they’re going to get away with it unless there’s a real overall focus on it,” he said.
He said the Serious Fraud Office was unable to provide any assistance.
After the balloon went up and complaints of fraud began circulating in the media and courtrooms, Syed retreated to Bahrain and spent more than six years contesting fraud claims pushed by van Leewarden that ended in disappointment.
Van Leewarden chooses his words carefully, talking about justice in the Gulf enclave: “I had a number of briefings with the prosecutors in Bahrain. They didn’t really have an appetite for the case, and they seemed anyway to arrive at a position whereby what had happened were just normal commercial transactions.”
Syed then fled to Turkey, becoming a citizen there and abandoning his Indian passport, before authorities in Ankara stripped him of citizenship in 2022 and he relocated once more to London.
It was then late 2022 and, arriving at London airport, Syed’s luck finally ran out.
Arrested by English police on a 2013 Swiss warrant for fraud that demanded extradition, Syed spent two years behind bars in Britain before his appeals against being deported were exhausted.
In late 2024 he made his final journey to Switzerland where Swiss prosecutors and a New Zealand private investigator were waiting for him to finally face the music.
Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. In 2011 he broke the first story about Western Gulf Advisory being an apparent advance fee fraud. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism – including twice being named Reporter of the Year – and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting from business newspapers and national magazines.