Paresh Raja ‘confident of clearing his name’, arguing ‘the finger has been pointed at the wrong target’

Speaking publicly for the first time since the administration of Market Financial Solutions in February this year, former CEO Paresh Raja has made a sweeping denial of all wrongdoing.

A defence was filed on the 25th September in the commercial court.

Raja denies that he “misappropriated, or caused, or allowed the misappropriation of, any monies of the SPVs, of MFS or of any other entity; denies that he acted dishonestly or in bad faith at any time; and denies that he acted in breach of any of the duties which he owed to MFS as a director”.

The defence alleges that the ultimate cause of MFS’s administration is owed to Barclays freezing all accounts held by the bridging lender, a total of around £145m.

To Raja’s knowledge, he claims that MFS had never defaulted on a loan or payment prior to this.

The defence asserts that “it was only several weeks after Barclays froze the accounts of the business in November 2025 that any issues in relation to the cashflow insolvency of MFS arose (and, even then, only as a result of those accounts having been frozen), and at no material time was MFS balance sheet insolvent”.

Raja's defence denies the administrators' claim that he misappropriated £1.267bn, and argues the figure fails to take into account properties worth more than £950m held on trust for the MFS group.

It also claimed that it left out “at least £71.5m” of cash in group accounts.

The defence also said the alleged “external lender shortfall” ignores loans made by other MFS group entities, large cash balances held by these entities, and interest payments, redemptions and recoveries made since January 2026.

London Bridging, one of the nine SPV’s whose alleged losses MFS claims exposure to, has issued its own Chancery Division proceedings against Paresh Raja, seeking equitable compensation of £242,110,079.78 for alleged misappropriations.

Raja has called for these proceedings to be stayed pending, or case-managed and heard together with Raja’s claim to avoid inconsistent findings and double recovery.

The defence explains that from around 2022, Raja was preparing the business for a merger, sale or flotation by 2027/2028. In order to achieve this, he allegedly took steps to increase the transparency of the business and strengthen its processes and corporate governance.

A statement from a spokesperson for Raja, shared by international advisory firm Tancredi Group, said: “Paresh Raja spent 20 years building this business. The actions of Barclays destroyed it within weeks.

“That is the real scandal here. And contrary to the impression the claimants seek to portray, Mr Raja put nine-figure sums back into the business and then when Barclays’ actions made administration inevitable, he spent a week walking the incoming administrators through how the business worked to give them the best chance of saving it, the jobs of almost 200 employees, and the funds invested.

“Those are not the actions of a fraudster — the finger has been pointed at the wrong target.

“The administrators had spent some £4m before this claim was even issued, and creditors are reported to have committed up to £29m more to fund the administration and its litigation.

“Creditors are entitled to ask what that spending is achieving, and for whom — because every pound of it comes out of their recoveries, in pursuit of a claim that cannot settle on its own numbers and has already produced a costs order against MFS.

“Mr Raja will defend this claim all the way. He remains ready, as he always has been, to work with any officeholder whose priority is recovering value for creditors rather than running up costs in their own interests.”

Raja is being represented by Mishcon de Reya LLP.