By Rania Hindi and Mohammad Hawamdeh

AMMAN - The Amman prosecutor general on Saturday reportedly charged the owners and business partners of Matrix Company for Financial Investments with fraud after it announced voluntary liquidation, prompting thousands of clients to call at its 13 offices around the Kingdom in an attempt to recover their funds.

According to reports, some of these offices were attacked by citizens who accused the owners of conning them. A total of 12,500 clients had invested around JD60 million in Matrix’s 13 branches across the Kingdom, financial sources told Al Rai Arabic daily.

Under the prosecutor general’s decision, the company’s funds and its partners’ personal monies were impounded. Moreover, the company’s partners were banned from leaving the country.

The prosecutor general’s decision followed directives from Companies Comptroller Sabri Rawashdeh, who pointed that the company’s voluntary liquidation decision entailed an intention to announce bankruptcy and “confiscate investors’ cash”.

In the past few weeks, the company announced that it was undergoing a voluntary liquidation process and investors have been gathering at the companies’ five liquidation centres, to reclaim their investments. The company has pledged to return the investments within three months under the liquidation process.

Rawashdeh, however, rejected the liquidation request and said it was an attempt to confiscate clients’ investments and protect the company’s legal rights.

Meanwhile, the company’s clients, who wanted to redeem their deposits at the Irbid branch yesterday, smashed windows and attempted to attack the office employees, suspecting that they were not going to receive their dues.

Explaining how the commotion started, clients who were at the branch yesterday said the company’s employees claimed that they did not have enough forms and could only handle 500 claims per day. Accordingly, the employees asked 500 depositors, who were given numbers to organise the distribution, to stay and told the rest to leave and return during the next few days. But some of the clients who were waiting outside felt there was some sort of fraud, so they tried to attack the staff and smashed furniture and windows. Policemen who arrived at the scene shortly after the incident managed to restore calm.

A wave of anxiety has recently gripped thousands of clients of currency trading offices, especially after the recent endorsement of a temporary law to regulate foreign currency dealings, under which these offices were given 60 days to rectify their legal status. Such companies used to operate under licences from municipalities or commercial chambers, listed as general or commercial services so as not to be subject to the monitoring of the Central Bank of Jordan or the Amman Stock Exchange.

Nader Khatatbeh and Ashraf Ghazawi in Irbid contributed to this article.