Businesses across the world ought to watch out for Matthew Quigley of Zenith Partners, based in Poland, after taking ‘administration fees’ for business funding and never providing the funds.
Seemingly Quigley is not only defrauding businesses, but also solicitors acting in the transactions.
(If you have been involved in the Zenith fraud, scroll to the bottom for a Form to register your details)
Who is Matthew Quigley?
The answer to that is, in short, that he is not Matthew Quigley!
Matthew Quigley was born Matthew Curran on 15 August 1971. For some reason best known to himself, he changed name by Deed Poll from Matthew Curran to Matthew Quigley. Despite this, he uses both the months of July and August of 1971 in Companies House filings.
In March 2007 an unemployed Matthew James Quigley was bankrupted……
Oddly, just 4 months later in July 2007, someone called Matthew Anthony Curran was also bankrupted……. could this be the same person?
Just a few years later in 2014, Matthew Quigley was featured on a BBC program called Inside Out. Two years later the BBC News ran an article on him concerning the ambulance company which went bust.
I have found a total of 39 companies in the UK set up under the name of Matthew James Quigley which have been dissolved and/or gone into insolvency. To date, he appears to be director of another 8 companies.
Under the name of Matthew Curran, he has set up a total of 13 companies, all of which have been dissolved.
Seemingly, Quigley went on to become a quasi finance broker, offering ‘solutions’ such as invoice finance……however, Matthew Quigley does not hold any form of authorization by the Financial Conduct Authority to do so – and ostensibly this is regulated activity. Potentially this is a criminal offence.
In December 2017 Quigley set up various companies under the name of Zenith Partners Ltd and Zenith Partners Trading Ltd.
At some point, Matthew Quigley exiled himself to Poland setting up Zenith Partners Spolka Z o o.
Matthew Quigley also has a glass eye!
The Zenith Partners Fraud
The Zenith Partners fraud is relatively straightforward and unsophisticated, unfortunately it does appear to be fraud in many ways legitimized by the abusive use of solicitors. Although in some cases those solicitors have themselves to blame, as explained below.
The False Claims
Quigley claims to have various ‘Funds’. These are said to be in a range of places including Poland, Luxembourg and America. He claims that the wealthy Polish Jurczyk family have invested in his fund. He also claims that the Polish fund is registered with the Polish KNF (equivalent to the Financial Conduct Authority).
With these bold statements he claims to be able to offer business financing, usually in the form of a Convertible Loan Note, or other type of financial instrument.
For arranging said funding, Quigley seeks an administration fee in advance… Usually this is somewhere around the £5,000 mark. However some businesses have reported it as low as £1,250, and others towards the £10,000 mark.
Then Quigley will introduce the business to a firm of solicitors for the purpose of legal paperwork. Sometimes the firms are Polish, but usually UK-based.
During this process Quigley and Zenith string out the process. Claim after claim is made regarding supposed delays and deadline after deadline missed.
Sometimes it gets no further than that, with businesses becoming annoyed and terminating the transactions. At other times, the legal agreements are counter-signed, but no funds are ever received.
When the transaction is terminated because the business becomes frustrated at lack of funds and/or slow legal process – Matthew Quigley claims to return the administration fee(s). In reality, he never does.
Often, Quigley will blame the business seeking funding for the reason why the transaction has failed. Usually this when the businesses start to threaten him with legal proceedings or press him to close the transaction – he will claim this is an irrecoverable breakdown. At other times, Quigley will make absurd and baseless allegations, such as in once case claiming one of the business owners is under investigation for fraud – albeit that these claims are entirely false and baseless.
The Reality
Quigley claims these funds have regulatory approval – but in reality they do not. There is nothing whatsoever on the KNF to suggest that this is an authorised (or even registered) fund. When searching the reference number Quigley has provided to various businesses it, it produces nothing on the KNF register.
The Jurczyk family have explicitly said they have nothing to do with him. A solicitors letter seen by me confirmed that:
It was confirmed by [name removed] after speaking with Sebastian Jurczyk that the family in question had never agreed to provide capital funding and had never deposited any money in any bank account [of Quigley/Zenith] and had no intention of doing so.
and
….IBB Media also spoke to Martyna Jurczyk who again confirmed that the family had not and did not intend to invest in Zenith.
In some cases Quigley uses falsified bank statements (more on this below) to attempt to prove Zenith has refunded administration fees. Unfortunately, the bank statement was sent to an IT expert who confirmed that the PDF had been falsified through its Metadata.
ING de-banks Matthew Quigley and Zenith Partners
A key factor of the Zenith Partners fraud is the proof of funds. Businesses expecting funds and solicitors alike have been demanding proof of funds from Quigley.
In attempt to demonstrate proof of funds, Quigley provided this bank statement claiming to show
205,567,850.00pln in the bank…… This in £GBP, is just over £40M:
This however is a complete fabrication and falsification of documents.
In an internal email at ING seen by myself, a representative of ING says (Polish translated):
In my humble opinion, the attached document is a forgery. The funds shown there are out of this world. I don’t know if [Zenith/Matthew Quigley] shouldn’t be kept on some list because of this forgery.
Another colleague at ING responds (Polish translated):
yes, it is fake, at the time indicated on the document the account balance was PLN 10.39.
10.39PLN, is about £2.04 at current conversion rates! Not quite the £40M claimed!!
Fortunately, the good people of ING’s Polish branch don’t mess about, and wrote the following (Polish translated):
Please exit the relationship with the client kkf 2211738166. The client is trying to deceive his contractors with false confirmations.
Exiting the relationship on the basis of the Regulations on opening and maintaining bank accounts at ING Bank Śląski S.A. § 16.5.7 we will not be able to perform the obligations under the application of financial security measures, which are specified in the Act on Counteracting Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing.
And with that Matthew Quigley and Zenith Partners were de-banked by ING for fraud!
This of course wasn’t for long. Quigley has since set up accounts with Poland’s Bank Pekao under Zenith’s name. However, as explained above, Quigley provided other false bank statements claiming to have refunded administration fees. Bank Pekao are now investigating.
Fraud Legitimised by Solicitors?
Solicitors are required by their regulator to play their part in stopping fraud. One of the key factors about stopping fraud is that solicitors acting for clients are supposed to conduct anti-fraud and anti-money laundering checks. Before acting for any client they need to be entirely satisfied that their client is not doing anything they shouldn’t be doing.
Matthew Quigley seems to have done the rounds with solicitors. Reportedly, he is in debt to the tune of over £300,000 to various law firms. This includes large and well respected firms such as Shoosmiths, McCarthy Denning and HCR Law. Quigley has also got his talons into other smaller boutique law firms.
HCR Law
In March of 2024, Zenith’s external solicitor Dr Saverio Salandra from HCR Law requested a series of documents, seemingly to do proper backgrounds checks into Zenith and Matthew Quigley. It would appear he was never furnished with the information, but (recklessly) continued to act anyway.
By May 2024 matters came to a head when HCR were instructed to threaten two individuals who were contracted by Zenith as consultants. These individuals believed what Quigley told them was true, and when they found out the truth concerning the falsified documents and the Jurczyk family, they refused to continue to be associated with Quigley.
This resulted in an angry letter from HCR Law, a series of attempted undertakings and demands for disclosure and delivery up of documents. The letters themselves have the hallmarks of a SLAPP. On the face of it, the letters were probably written by Quigley himself and adjusted by HCR, as they contain phrases that solicitors tend not to use such as “nonsense”, which is a word Quigley uses to describe anything that exposes the truth about him.
In June 2024, the letter was responded to by top law firm Anthony Gold Solicitors. The general contents of the response is irrelevant for the the purposes of this post (despite being very well written), apart from one specific issue: twice in the letter HCR Law were informed there was an ongoing criminal investigation into Matthew Quigley and Zenith. Other parts of the Anthony Gold letter referred to things Quigley did which were “untrue”, “falsified” or done “fraudulently”.
Solicitors don’t use the words “untrue”, “falsified” or “fraudulently” without good reason to, and in this case Anthony Gold were right to…. The fact that Anthony Gold were prepared to use these words should have rang alarm bells with HCR Law, notwithstanding HCR were informed of an active criminal investigation – and Dr Saverio Salandra had demanded information from Quigley several months prior.
Quite obviously, when HCR Law became aware of a criminal investigation and the allegations by Anthony Gold they had a duty, in the very least, to investigate and undertake further checks into their client.
This plainly did not happen. The letter from Anthony Gold was dated June 2024 – yet in August and September 2024, Dr Saverio Salandra was still acting for Zenith Partners and Matthew Quigley.
The issues of fraud have now been firmly re-stated to HCR in September 2024, including their Risk Management Partner Lesley-Ann Hamlyn. If HCR continue to act for Matthew Quigley and Zenith Partners there are clear regulatory issues which need bringing to the attention of the Solicitors Regulatory Authority – HCR have had 3 clear warnings; in March 2024, June 2024 and now September 2024.
Dr Saverio Salandra is now the subject of an official complaint to HCR Law, and pending the result of that will be subject to a complaint to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. Obviously, HCR and Dr Saverio Salandra are now liable for multiple negligence claims.
McCarthy Denning
HCR Law are not the only company to fail to do proper background checks into Matthew Quigley and Zenith. McCarthy Denning’s Partner Michael Wistow is seemingly proud to act for them. In an email seen by me to Person B, Wistow boasts:
It is reasonably early days as regards taking over the lion’s share of the transactional legal work for Zenith. We are not fund counsel – yet !
So, he clearly has satisfied himself there is in fact a fund (when there clearly isn’t)! He goes on to say:
I can say that, as well as being in the process of taking over a large number of transactional matters for Zenith, we are acting on various litigation related matters to do with a couple of former employees making defamatory comments and who we believe are in breach of their obligations and, amongst other things, using confidential information to undermine the Zenith business. We have seen various emails that have been sent to Zenith investee companies. My head of litigation is leading this.
Person B raises concerns to Wistow saying:
…..my brother and I started receiving a more than normal amount of reference request, and Matthew also introduced me to a few who are seeking references, which I was very happy to give, including to a gentleman named [Person X] (Matthew put us in touch). as it turned out, the call with [Person X] was not really a reference request it was more an interrogation, particularly asked me how I was involved with Matthew and Zenith, which he said he was recording because he believed it to be a Ponzi/fraud scheme.
Wistow brushed off any concerns of fraud relating to Zenith and Quigley, saying:
Obviously if we believed any of this we would not be acting.
I think I’ve been around the block a bit. For your information before McCarthy Denning I was a full equity partner at Clifford Chance for 10 years, then head of dept and on the executive committee and board of BLP for 9 years before being an equity partner at White & Case for 4 years.
Basically, what Michael Wistow is saying is “trust me I’m a solicitor”…. But as we know, if Wistow or McCarthy Denning had done the most basic of checks, it would have revealed Matthew Quigley’s troubling history – and the fact there is no fund…..and that’s why you should never trust a solicitor.
Wistow’s claims are also somewhat suspicious. In an email sent on 25 September at 11:36, McCarthy Denning’s Head of Litigation Ian Timlin (referred to in Wistow’s email above) says, with Michael Wistow copied in to the email (my emphasis added):
For the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever, we are not instructed to accept service of any legal documents or proceedings on behalf of Mr Quigley or any Zenith entity in relation to any matter or dispute.
So McCarthy Denning are not instructed in ANY matter involving Quigley or Zenith as at 11:36 on 25 September? This is infatigably clear, and was in response to a pre-action letter concerning Quigley’s fraud – so McCarthy Denning at this point knew there were more complaints of fraud.
Well…… at 12:42 on the same day Person B sends an email to Wistow staying:
Hi Michael
Below [in a separate email thread quoted above, where Wistow boasts of handling “various litigation related matters”] you firmly state that you are acting for Matthew Quigley or Zenith on various litigation related matters, can you confirm that this is still the case?
At 14:22 on the same day Michael Wistow responds stating:
Dear [Person B]
Yes that is still the case.
So how is it possible at 11:36 McCarthy Denning say (with Wistow in copy) they are not instructed in any matter or dispute regarding Quigley and Zenith……but at 14:22 Michael Wistow claims the complete opposite?
Aside from all of this, what Wistow said about two claims said to be made against “employees” is false. Firstly, they are not former employees, they were contractors. Secondly, Anthony Gold told HCR to do one and raised the issues of fraud, as explained above – so again if Wistow and/or McCarthy Denning have seen those letters they would be aware of even more fraud complaints. Thirdly, I’ve checked CE-File (and spoken to Kings Bench and Chancery divisions), there are no active proceedings under the names of Zenith or Quigley. So again, another tall story from Wistow.
In reality, Michael Wistow of McCarthy Denning is nothing but a carpetblagger solicitor trying to impress people as a corporate lawyer, whilst failing to do basic client checks. This of course makes him also personally liable for negligence and associated damages. Another complaint to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority is in order!
The Fake Awards!
Perhaps an amusing part to this sorry state of affairs is it seems that Matthew Quigley has been scammed by the scammers!
A few months ago I wrote about AI Global Media and their scam of harvesting email addresses and handing out fake awards. It seems that one of their victims is none less than Matthew Quigley and Zenith Partners themselves!
Apparently, Zenith Partners won the “Most Approachable & Agile Global Investment Partner 2021” in the Worldwide Finance Awards 2021…. It seems Quigley was even conned into paying for the certificate – although AI Global Media have probably never been paid either.
Conclusion
Matthew Quigley (as he calls himself today) of Zenith Partners, seemingly residing in Poland is not someone to be trusted whatsoever.
DO NOT pay him any money up front, you won’t get it back. DO NOT trust a word he says, it’s all lies.
Rumor has it that he has plans to flee to the US…..but you need a Visa to live and work in the US, and the Homeland Security will undertake searches of Matthew James Quigley – including Google searches…. I do hope they are reading this – it will be SEO’d to the top of Google!
You heard it here first: steer well clear of Matthew James Quigley of Zenith Partners, who resides in Poland.
Have you been a victim of the Matthew Quigley/Zenith Fraud?
There is an ongoing case to prosecute Matthew Quigley for fraud. If you believe you may be a victim to the fraud, you can fill in the form below to reach the prosecution team:
Postscript
On the 2 October 2024, HCR wrote to me to confirm that they no longer act for Zenith, ostensibly meaning Zenith Partners Ltd, Zenith Partners Trading Ltd and Zenith Partners Spolka Z o o – and indeed Matthew Quigley himself.
A copy of that letter is here:
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