A story about how ex-England cricket star Phil Edmonds used anonymously-owned shell companies and tax havens to rip off investors.

With his partner Andrew Groves, the former England cricket star built a corrupt business empire in Africa on bribes, scams and intimidation.

It is claimed that they also ripped off ordinary UK pension holders and other investors by millions of pounds, relying on secret companies in the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens for their scams.

Here’s how the scam works.

You float a company on a stock exchange, which you use to generate revenue from unsuspecting investors. At the same time, you set up another group of companies in secretive locations like the British Virgin Islands, Delaware and other tax havens. Without telling investors you also own this second group of companies, you use them to sell a series of assets – land, property, planes, for example – to your listed company at vastly inflated prices. You then pocket the difference between what they’re actually worth and what you sold them for.

Investors lose out, and you win big, all thanks to secret company ownership. If you own both parties to a deal it is known as a ‘related party transaction’ and stock market and accountancy rules insist that such deals are disclosed in order to ensure fair play. But it is easy to avoid these rules as there are plenty of places in the world, such as most of the UK’s Overseas Territories, where details of who owns and controls companies are kept secret.

Read the full story of Edmonds and Groves in our new investigation: The Deceivers