LOWELL FINANCIAL ~ LOWELL PORTFOLIO I LTD ~ RED DEBT COLLECTIONS ~ HAMPTONS LEGAL ~ DLA PIPER.

Lowell’s Financial Limited have retained Messrs DLA Piper to ask SAFE to change its website item entitled, “Debt Skeleton in Your Cupboard” which they say;

“contains factual inaccuracies which we request are corrected, but also places our client’s directors at risk because of the unauthorised and wholly unwarranted publication on the website of their residential addresses.”

They also object to our implying that their letters and modus operandi is ‘intimidating’ and/or seeks to ‘harass’ debtors.

Furthermore they inform SAFE that Lowell’s have;

“been granted a Confidentiality Order under the Company’s (Particulars of Usual Residential Address) (Confidentiality Orders) (Regulations 2002) SI 2002 No 912, which allows them to disclose a service address in place of the usual residential address on the part of the Company’s register which is made for public inspection.”

SAFE has replied as follows:-

“It is noted from the said enclosures that your client found it necessary to seek personal protection on 21^st November 2007 to enable them to use an address of convenience instead of their own.   This change was logged into Companies House on the 5^th December 07.

We have spoken at senior level with Companies House who informed us that all material filed prior to the 5^th December 2007, for example the Annual Return and Accounts for year ending 31^st August 2007, will, together with all previous filings remain in the Public Domain and that anyone who pays the prescribed search fee can do with them as they please.   Obviously when your client files his 2008 Returns in August the substitute addresses of the directors will show.

In your letter you say that our website, www.safe-online.org contains ‘factual inaccuracies’ but you do not specify what they are.   May we ask that you specify the alleged inaccuracies so that we may address them.

You also say that your client takes issue with our reference to intimidation and harassment.  The said comments are based upon transcripts and tape recordings of conversations between your client’s operatives and debtors.  Also officers of SAFE have sat in on telephone conversations and would describe your client’s operatives as intimidating and harassing.  This must be the opinion of others and undoubtedly the cause for the Lowell Directors to seek the protection of anonymity. The knowledge that they do not have the protection they sought may cause them to be more responsible and stringent in the control of their operatives and to keep them within industry OFT and FSA guide lines.”

Obviously in view of the above it may well be that SAFE may be forced to remove from its website the material which would seem to have exposed Lowell’s Directors to retaliation from debtors.