I am a retired merchant marine officer (Captain) and I retired in 2015. I lived in Brazil for some 40 years and I have a daughter there as well as her mother. I worked up a pension fund and built myself a very comfy house and intention was to live there together with my love and our daughter. Married life, raising our daughter and my wife working with her specialty that is fabricating furniture in steel tubes in the garage/workshop area and living off the returns on my pension fund and her work. It is all in shatters.

What happened to me is very sad.

I came to know a businessman some 20 year before retiring; he had a money changing business, travel agency and some other interests. I used to change personal checks in US dollars with him when I needed money for everyday expenses while on vacation from sea service. He also offered me to invest with him. This I also tried out a number of times with some minor amounts that I could risk and it worked out with no remarks and with interests duly paid.  

In 2012 I invested 150.000 USD, my savings, with this businessman and intention was to let it sit with him and earn interest and retire from sea service in early 2015. This I also did and my friend/businessman showed me accounts once a month on what had happened with my investment with him and it looked promising and I was looking forward to a comfy and meaningful old age with my wife and my daughter.

In January 2015 I retired from sea service and we started to plan for life together, looking for a new school for our daughter, me buying some tools for my interest in carpentry, new TIG welder for the specialty of my future wife to her to work with her specialty. Bits and pieces like that. Slowly putting pieces together for a life together including preparations for marrying.

In March 2015 I requested the first return on my investment with this businessman and it worked with no remarks, same thing in April 2015. In May 2015 everything came to a grinding halt, no payment from my fund sitting with him. The businessman/friend stated to me that he had been accused of money laundering, tax evasion and transfer of funds abroad without going via the official channels of the Brazil Central Bank and that everything he had was frozen and under threat to be seized. If true that he did not have any funds hidden to at least partly compensate me I don’t know.

Well, result of the above was that we placed all our plans on hold, I myself sold two small pieces of land I had fast and cheap to survive. Intention with those two pieces of land was to build two houses for renting out and for our little girl once she came to age.

In 2017 I travelled to Sweden to get my government pension going and found out that it was a very small amount as I had worked on foreign ships and foreign companies next to my entire working life. Extra benefits I was not eligible for as I lived outside Sweden.

In 2018 I sold the house I built, and again cheap, fast and well below market value and bought a far more modest house outside the city where I lived. And continued the struggle to get my pension fund back from this businessman. I now took to check him out in the official records of the courts of law and it did not look good. A thing I should have done a long time ago before investing with him. The sad result of trust and innocence.

In December 2019 things became unviable, the down payments of the house of my dreams I sold came to an end and all that was left was my government pension from Sweden. I sold the much more modest house I lived in and again fast, cheap and well below market value and bought a one way air ticket Sweden, took goodbye of my daughter and my woman. Memories of some 40 years I also had to abandon, my library, a valuable collection of antique cameras, art etc.

Before travelling I checked out where to live in Sweden and quickly found out that most rents were far from compatible with my government pension, even with benefits. Only place I found apartments for immediate rent and with a rent compatible with my government pension was way up in north, the city of Haparanda where winter lasts some nine months and for some three months we have only some three hours, or even less of a very bleak daylight.

I have not found any friends here in Sweden, I am very lonely and the government pension barely covers fixed expenses like rent, utilities, groceries etc. Clothes and shoes was a very long since I bought. Any travel for distracting the mind is out of question. I have a little artistic talent for drawing and painting, but so far I have had to limit myself to pencil, colored pencils and china ink, painting with oil colours is a no-go as I can’t afford such gear. I have tried to sell my little artistic talent, but with very few results. What has kept me up so far is that I am regularly talking to my daughter and her mom on Whatsapp and the dream of getting my life back. I feel also very strange and foreign here in Sweden; 40 years in another country leaves deep marks.

My daughter and her mom are also living a precarious life. Her specialty in fabricating steel furniture has on a number of occasions gone sour; either she has not been paid or client has pulled back also her welding machine and other tools have broken down and she had to take up temporary jobs like cleaning the house for other people etc.

·       My dream of getting my life back and getting together with the love of my life is viable and get her and my daughter out of poverty if the goal is reached. A simple house in a less affluent area where I used to live and get things mounted up again. And be happy again for the few years I have left.

The pictures are showing what was taken away from me. The love of my life, my daughter and the house I built for my old age.

To anybody donating something to my hopes and dreams I am extending the most sincere thanks from the depth of my heart.