A failed investment fund manager and promoter has had its financial services operating licence revoked by the island’s regulator.

Premier Group (IoM) Ltd went into voluntary liquidation in November last year.

The Manx taxpayer is picking up the bill to wind up two of its allied funds, New Earth Recycling and Renewables and the Eco-Resources Fund.

Regulator the Financial Services Authority has confirmed it is actively reviewing ’allegations and events’ surrounding Premier Group and its group of companies.

And now the FSA has said it has revoked Premier Group IoM’s licence with effect from December 6.

Setting out the reasons for revoking the licence, the regulator said the group had not met audit requirements to provide financial statements for the year ended December 2016 or paid outstanding fees from its last annual licence and certain administrative penalties.

Premier Group had also failed to obtain ’run-off’ professional indemnity insurance cover ’in respect of claims arising from past actors omissions’, the regulator said.

It added: ’The authority would expect a licence holder such as PGIOM to take steps to hold appropriate run-off PII but PGIOM has not been able to achieve this.’

The FSA said although the company has ceased all regulated activity, the authority was not able to accept the surrender of its licence and it had to be revoked instead.

Earlier this year, an action group representing pensioners who lost their life savings in Premier Group distributed a dossier of evidence to Tynwald members.

The Premier Shareholders’ Group claimed there are ’hundred’ of victims spread across the world, at least 200 of them pensioners. They said the authorities in the Isle of Man had received a stream of complaints over the last 15 years - but claimed the regulator, the Treasury, the Office of Fair Trading all failed to act.

But former Premier Group director John Bourbon, who helped design experienced investor funds in his previous role as head of supervision at the Financial Supervision Commission, rejected many of the group’s claims.

He suggested Premier Group may be victim of ’something of a witch hunt’ and said while it was ’possible’ that hundreds of investors had made a loss, an equal number or more could have made a profit.

New Earth Recycling and Renewables (NERR), part of the New Earth Group of Funds, which invested in recycling plants in the UK, went into liquidation in June last year.

Eco-Resources Fund, which was set up to investment in bamboo plantations, was ordered to be wound by the high court in March this year.