BEN BUTLER
Business reporterMelbourne

Insurance giant QBE has reported an Australian company ­targeting eastern European investors with the lure of 50 per cent returns in a month to the corporate regulator.

The company, Skyllex, is heavily promoted on Polish language websites and is believed to have thousands of investors from eastern Europe.

On its colourful website, which is decorated with pictures of the Sydney Opera House, it claims to operate from the ASX building in Sydney and reassures would-be investors in a bewildering array of schemes covering everything from real estate to virtual currency bitcoin that their deposits are protected by insurance from QBE.

However, there appears to be no such business in the ASX building and QBE says it does not provide deposit insurance and has no record of any relationship with the company.

The company is also not connected to the ASX, despite listing it on its website among “partners” that also include the Singapore, New Zealand, London and New York exchanges.

“Having recently had this matter drawn to our attention, we moved swiftly to raise our concerns with ASIC,” a QBE spokesman said.

An ASIC spokesman declined to comment.

Skyllex boasts that its out-size returns, which can be boosted by signing up further investors, are driven by “such macroeconomic factors as the foreign exchange market and interest income” and “vigorous activity” on the ASX.

“Our activity is absolutely legal and is regulated by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission,” it claims on its website.

A YouTube video promoting Skyllex also makes much of the ASIC registration, which is claimed to prove the legitimacy of the operation.

“The company is real — this is not a scam company,” an individual named EJ Sandique says in the corporate video.

In another YouTube video, Skyllex claims its staff are “professional traders”. “We know what success smells like,” a voiceover in the video says.

Skyllex also claims an office in St Petersburg — a spartan room on the sixth level of a building near the Nevsky Prospect subway station, according to another company video — which it guarantees is manned between 11am and 6pm, Moscow time.

However, the ASIC database shows Skyllex does not possess an Australian financial services licence, which is required to offer investments to retail customers in this country.

Nor is it an authorised representative of a company that does hold a licence.

And it is vague about where investor money is placed. “The company allocates funds within such accounts for investments into tools of stock market, including stocks, the state and corporate bonds, including eurobonds, and also exchange funds (ETF), indexes (S&P/ASX 200) and share & mutual funds,” it says.

Skyllex is willing to accept deposits of as little as $US50 and as much as $US500,000 (in its “VIP Money Vertex” program).

Profits can be as high as 1100 per cent over 90 days through its “Gold Flow” scheme, it claims.

Skyllex also spruiks a four-level referral program, where investors earn bonus interest of up to 21 per cent by introducing new investors.

The company’s sole director and shareholder, Tom Jankauskas — who on company paperwork claims to live in the ASX building — could not be reached yesterday.

Attempts to reach the Sydney phone number provided on Skyllex’s website were met with a recorded message saying the call could not be connected.

While Skyllex’s corporate video, posted in July last year, claims that it had been operating its online trading branch “a bit more than one year”, company records show Mr Jankauskas registered Skyllex only the previous month.

It is the only Australian company with which he is associated, according to ASIC records.

No proof of identity or address is required to register a company in Australia — a loophole the Productivity Commission recommended the government rectify in a December 2015 report.

The company has been heavily touted on web forums promoting so-called “high yield investment programs”, including Talkgold.com. However, Talkgold says it does not vouch for the HYIPs users talk about.