Investigation — Part Two

The Silent Conduit: Regal Consultancy International’s Central Role in the CSM Securities Storm

By a Fraud Alert News Correspondent

If CSM Securities Sàrl was the engine of the alleged fraud, then Regal Consultancy International was its exhaust — loud, persuasive, and, according to multiple sources, channeling a toxic cloud of misinformation directly to unsuspecting investors.

As detailed in Part One of this investigation, the Luxembourg-based bond house CSM Securities has been accused of running a Ponzi-style scheme disguised as a non-performing loan (NPL) bond. But bonds do not sell themselves. They require a human voice, a trusted intermediary, and a network of financial advisers willing to stake their reputations on a product. According to internal documents, court pleadings, and witness testimony — referenced here as [CS001] through [CS023] — that intermediary was Regal Consultancy International, a firm now alleged to have been the indispensable salesman for a product its own principals may have known was rotten from the start.

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The Deal

Beginning in 2020, CSM Securities entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with Regal Consultancy International, then run by Robert Cormack — described in multiple sources as a longstanding associate of Stewart Ford, the UK financier subject to a lifetime ban and a £75 million fine following the Keydata collapse. Regal’s mandate was simple: introduce CSM’s NPL bonds to high-net-worth investors.

By early 2023, Regal’s Global Sales Director, David Russell, was making explosive claims. According to documents [CS001], [CS002] and [CS009], Russell informed investors and advisers that the FE1 bond had raised nearly £95 million of its £100 million target. The implied message was one of safety in numbers: a nearly full subscription meant institutional confidence, low risk, and a smooth path to maturity.

That claim, investors now allege, was a fraudulent misrepresentation on an epic scale.

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The £87 Million Phantom

Evidence obtained by this publication, including Mr Cormack’s own testimony and CSM’s confidential regulatory filings, suggests that at the very time Russell was touting a £95 million raise, the actual subscription stood at approximately £8 million. These discrepancies are laid out in excruciating detail at [CS003] paragraphs 37 and 38, and further corroborated by [CS004] through [CS008].

The difference — some £87 million — existed only in Regal’s marketing materials. For two years, Regal’s sales force continued to issue consistently positive reports on the bond’s performance, documented at [CS010], [CS011] and [CS012]. Coupons were paid on time. Advisers were reassured. Investors were placated. And all the while, the gap between what was being sold and what actually existed allegedly grew into an unbridgeable chasm.

When the bond matured on August 20, 2025, and promptly defaulted, the true picture emerged. Investors were told the subscription was not £95 million but £11 million — and even that smaller sum, they claim, could not be clearly accounted for. The £87 million phantom had vanished, leaving only questions and, increasingly, allegations of fraud.

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The Conference Call: Promises Made, Promises Broken

Perhaps the most damning evidence of Regal’s conduct comes from the September 5, 2025, noteholder conference call — a transcript of which is held at [CS015]. On that call, alongside CSM’s Colm Smith, Regal was represented by Adam Duthie and Robert Cormack. Facing a group of alarmed financial advisers, Regal’s representatives did not deny the misrepresentations. Instead, they pivoted to damage control.

According to the transcript and multiple witness accounts, Regal committed to a series of undertakings: an independent audit of the bond’s activities, a historical review of how investor funds had been deployed, the creation of a transparent website for inter-noteholder communication, and the appointment of an independent monitor. These promises, investors were told, would be fulfilled before any vote to extend the bond’s life by three years.

But a follow-up memo from Regal’s agents, detailed at [CS016], allegedly omitted several of these key undertakings. And when the promised cashflow projections finally arrived, sources say it was of such poor quality [CS019] that they were effectively useless. The promised website was not a forum for collective action but a two-way communication system that allowed Regal and CSM to control the narrative. The independent monitor never materialised. The promised audit has still never been delivered.

In short, investors allege, Regal used the conference call to buy time — and then delivered nothing.

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The Hidden Downgrade

Most critically, Regal never notified noteholders that on September 1, 2025 — just days before the conference call — Credit Spectrum, the same ratings agency whose assessments had been used to promote the bond’s safety, had written to CSM and defaulted both the FE1 and FE6 bonds [CS020]. While Regal’s representatives were on the call, reassuring investors of a positive future, the very foundation of the bond’s marketed safety had already crumbled. Investors were kept in the dark.

The Unspoken Catastrophe of August 2024

Yet there is an even deeper betrayal that Regal and CSM allegedly chose to conceal. According to court documents [CS003] at paragraph 26, sources have confirmed that in August 2024 — more than a full year before the bond’s maturity — the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the Vienna Stock Exchange delisted the bonds and refused to list any new bond issuances, and the listing agents resigned from their functions for CSM.

Think carefully about the timing. In August 2024, the very mechanisms that gave CSM’s bonds a veneer of legitimacy were collapsing. Stock exchanges were shutting their doors. Listing agents were walking away. And yet, for the next twelve months, Regal Consultancy continued to issue positive performance reports — all without once disclosing that the bonds had been effectively exiled from mainstream European exchanges.

As one investor put it: “If I had known in August 2024 that Frankfurt and Vienna had thrown them out, I would have run. Instead, Regal kept selling.”

The Tainted Vote

Against this backdrop of hidden downgrades, secret delistings, and unfulfilled promises, CSM claimed that noteholders had voted to extend the bond’s life by three years at the EGM held on November 7, 2025. But many of the investors this publication has spoken to say they never received any voting instructions from their asset custodians. A vote taken in ignorance of such material facts, investors allege, is not a vote at all. It is a fig leaf.

Regulatory Reckoning

In the UK, complaints have now been filed with the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Conduct Authority against Regal Consultancy International, its officers, and its employees. The fact that Stewart Ford — a man banned for life from the UK financial industry — appears to have been operating through Regal as a silent architect of a product sold to British investors is, sources say, astonishing.

Conclusion

Regal Consultancy International was never a mere marketing agent. It was, according to the evidence gathered across [CS001] to [CS023], the face of the operation — the voice that told investors the bond was safe, the hand that collected their trust, and, allegedly, the mouthpiece that continued to sell a fantasy long after the underlying reality had collapsed.

End of Part Two

Fraud Alert News will continue to update this investigation as documents, testimony, and regulatory actions become available.