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When a Latrobe Valley resident decided to invest her ageing father’s last $30,000 into Gippsland Secured Investments three years ago, she felt she was making a solid financial investment.
Since attempting to withdraw the funds after a fixed term investment came to maturation late last week, Ms Grace* has been overcome by anxiety and uncertainty.
“I wanted to withdraw some funds because I needed to purchase hearing aids for my father, and I wanted to reinvest the rest,” Ms Grace said, who, after a complicated series of conversations, was told she could not access her father’s funds.
“There’s $150 million wrapped up in that company, and they are telling me they don’t have the liquid funds to pay this money out?
“They were very apologetic, but they only really stuck to a script about waiting for a new prospectus to be developed, and couldn’t help me further.”
With the company’s financial standing still largely unclear this week, Ms Grace said she could not bring herself to tell her father who, at the age of 80, is suffering from Parkinsons disease and experiences levels of dementia.
“I’m hoping that I would see the whole amount back, but I’m really not sure how realistic that is,” Ms Grace said.
“I’ve been investing this money there for a few years, where the interest rate was a bit higher for investors and because it loaned that money to local investments, which would supposedly help local growth into the future.
“I really liked the ethos of that, but I’m just feeling sick about it all at the moment.”
* Ms Grace is an assumed name to protect the person’s identity at her request.
