Zip Line
DeVere employees who did well made a lot of money. The firm had about 50 U.S. salesmen at its peak, and the top tier made more than $500,000 a year, former employees said. The best performers were invited to DeVere’s Christmas party in London. At the 2015 event at the Grosvenor Hotel, Green, DeVere’s founder, descended to the stage on a zip line amid fireworks, and the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls performed, the employees said.
Green, a trim and diminutive man, visited New York every few months. An employee would be assigned to bring a kettlebell to his hotel room for his morning workouts. Some former salesmen said he reminded them of the sinister nuclear-plant owner Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.”
Three of the former employees said they would drink booze out of paper cups during the day when Green wasn’t watching. Younger guys were sent downstairs to buy drugs from delivery men. Most of the misbehavior stopped around 2015, the former employees said. Salesmen who worked at DeVere more recently said they hadn’t seen anything untoward.
In 2015, one of DeVere’s few female employees sued for sexual harassment, saying salesmen made vulgar and racist comments about her husband, a black professional football player. The New York Post published a story about the lawsuit with the headline “I worked in real-life ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ den: NFL player’s wife.” Prior, the DeVere spokesman, said at the time that the allegations were “false and incredulous.” The case was settled out of court, though the former employee, Philippa Okoye, has since filed a second lawsuit alleging she wasn’t paid.
Singapore Sanction
DeVere has a history of run-ins with regulators. In 2008, a Singapore subsidiary was fined for using unlicensed advisers and selling insurance products outside its license mandate, according to a statement by the city-state’s regulator. The firm closed the office that year.
In Hong Kong, a former DeVere subsidiary was fined HK$3.1 million ($398,000) last year for breaches including using unlicensed advisers and failing to hand over information to a local regulator. Green had already acquired another firm, Acuma Hong Kong Ltd., and he uses that brand in the city now instead of DeVere.
DeVere is on a list of firms published by Japan’s regulator that aren’t authorized to solicit investors. It was on a similar list in Thailand, though it isn’t anymore. Its U.K. subsidiary stopped providing some pension advice this year amid a regulatory review. DeVere has blamed some problems on scammers using its name.
South Africa’s Financial Services Board is also investigating DeVere, according to Nokuthula Mtungwa, a spokeswoman for the agency. Ross Pennell, a former manager of DeVere’s Cape Town office who said he’s been contacted by the regulator, said the probe concerned fees and disclosures. He said clients weren’t told about some of the commissions they were paying or that some investments locked up their money for years.