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Missing $18m link in Argyle liquidation

Charles Thresh of KPMG Advisory Services

An accountant from KPMG Bermuda has been appointed as joint liquidator of a Gibraltar company alleged to be at the heart of a missing $18 million for a Hamilton hotel project.

Charles Thresh, a forensic accountant with the firm, will join Samuel Moses Vidal Cohen of Gibraltar firm Benady, Cohen and Co as liquidators of Argyle Ltd, which is based in the UK Overseas Territory bordering Spain.

Argyle Ltd was involved in a probe into the whereabouts of an $18 million loan to Par-la-Ville Hotel and Residences from Mexico Infrastructure Finance, which was intended to help to secure funding to build a hotel and residences on the site of Hamilton’s Par-la-Ville car park.

The loan was guaranteed by the Corporation of Hamilton after Parliament amended the law to allow the corporation to use the car park as collateral.

The funds were put in a New York escrow account and withdrawn in 2014, with much of the cash said to have gone to Argyle.

The developers later defaulted on the loan, which sparked legal action by Mexico Infrastructure against Par-la-Ville Hotel and Residences.

Mr Thresh and colleague Mike Morrison were last year appointed a joint provisional liquidators of Par-la-Ville Hotel and Residences by Bermuda’s Supreme Court.