The island’s financial regulator has refused to say how much the taxpayer has spent on the liquidation of a series of failed investment funds.

Isle of Man Newspapers submitted a Freedom of Information to the Financial Services Authority requesting details of the costs to date of the taxpayer-funded liquidation of companies linked to the Premier Group Isle of Man.

These companies included New Earth Recycling and Renewables (Infrastructure) plc and its two feeder funds Premier Investment Opportunities Fund and Eclipse Investment Fund, and Eco Resources Fund and its subsidiaries ERF Ltd and EcoPlanet Bamboo IoM.

We also asked if the taxpayer is funding the liquidation costs of any other company linked to or promoted by the Premier Group (IoM) - and if so, which ones and how much has been expended to date.

But the FSA refused to supply any information, claiming it was ’restricted’.

It said: ’While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the information is absolutely exempt from disclosure on the basis that disclosure is prohibited under schedule 5 to the Financial Services Act 2008.

’The information that is sought relates to the business or other affairs of the persons identified in the request and is, therefore, restricted information under the Act and so restricted by statute.’

The FSA noted that breach of this restriction is a criminal offence.

New Earth Recycling and Renewables (NERR) was wound up by the Manx authorities in June 2016.

It was part of the New Earth Group of Funds, which invested in recycling plants in the UK.

The group was managed and promoted by Premier Group (IoM), which went into voluntary liquidation in November 2016.

Together with its two feeder funds, NERR had some 3,249 investors and had been valued at $292m. But when the company folded, the value of those investments was close to zero.

We reported in July last year that liquidators’ fees and expenses in the taxpayer- funded winding up had totalled more than £374,700.

Eco Resources Fund was set up by Premier Group in 2012 to invest in bamboo plantations. It had a total of 189 investors and a valuation of $61m but was ordered to be wound by the high court in March 2017.

Earlier this year, liquidators of NERR failed in a legal bid to question former directors John Bourbon and Michael Richardson under oath after they declined to be interviewed.

The liquidators are now considering their next steps, saying they have not been given the detailed answers they wanted.