The commission took action against Paul Pybus and the firm Adjure Global. Mr Pybus was its managing director and the largest single beneficial owner of the company through a family trust arrangement. He was hit with a £150,000 fine and 10-year prohibition from the industry. The company was fined £300,000.
Among the actions which fell foul of the regulator was an attempt to cover up the relationship with a high-risk client.
The action was pursued in 2023 and an appeal heard by the Royal Court before Deputy Bailiff Jessica Roland last year.
The court upheld many of the findings of the senior decision maker – a retired senior judge – including many serious issues of conduct, saying they were ‘reasonable and proportionate’ while asking the commission to appoint a new decision maker reconsider matters of probity and integrity, which it said should have been more explicit in the original decision and Ms Roland described as ‘flawed’.
The commission will have to reconsider the sanctions it had imposed at the conclusion of that review.
Regulatory experts at consultancy Comsure have described the case as ‘a landmark in Guernsey’s regulatory jurisprudence’ which underscored the island’s commitment to robust regulation and judicial fairness.
‘Firms should treat probity as a core compliance risk and anticipate that both regulators and courts will hold them accountable,’ it said.
The commission said it was pleased that the concerns it raised in the case had been placed into the public domain, and undertook to carry out the review of the findings through a new senior decision maker, with explicit reference to the ‘Ivey Test’, the current legal standard in the UK for deciding whether someone has acted dishonestly.