British gold bullion millionaire killed in Spanish motorcycle crash
A British gold bullion millionaire has died in a motorcycle accident in Spain.
Paul Gerard Tustain, 62, veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided head-on with a van near Pamplona while en route to Logrono. He died at the scene.
His daughter, who was travelling on another motorbike behind him, was understood to be accompanying him on a tour of Spain.
Mr Tustain, who was born in Hartford, Cambridgeshire, was the founder and chairman of BullionVault, an online bullion investment service.
Before his gold venture, he founded Sam Systems, which specialised in mid- and back-office functions for the banking and stockbroking sectors.
The BMW rented motorbike he was on collided with a van on Thursday around 1.30pm local time on the NA-1110 road running beside the A-12 motorway, in a municipality called Iguzquiza, a 35-minute drive from Pamplona.
A spokesman for the police force for Navarra, the region where the accident happened, said: 'The dead man's daughter saw he had strayed onto the wrong side of the road and tried to alert him with hand signals but it was too late.
'He smashed head-on into a van that couldn't do anything to avoid the collision.
'A post-mortem will show whether he might have suffered a health problem that could have caused him to go onto the wrong side of the road.
'Otherwise, it's likely to have been a fatal distraction.'
Emergency services received a call around 1.40pm on Thursday. They sent ambulances and a helicopter to the scene, as well as police and firefighters, but there was nothing they could do to save Mr Tustain's life.
Pictures from the crash scene showed the white van with its front end crumpled.
A spokesman for local firefighters said: 'We were called about a head-on collision between a motorbike and a van on the NA-1110.
'The man on the motorbike died and the occupants of the van were unharmed.'
A police investigation into the accident is under way.
'Best purchase I ever made'
Mr Tustain moved into gold bullion after seeing Gordon Brown selling Britain's gold reserves in 2001.
He was quoted in The Times in 2016 as saying: 'The fool was selling gold every two weeks, they were selling so much that they destroyed the price.
'I eventually bought three of the gold bars; the big chunky ones that James Bond tosses around. It was probably the best purchase I ever made.'
He invested £275,000 rustled up from 30 family members and angel investors to establish BullionVault, a peer-to-peer site that allowed investors to buy small stakes in gold bars.
A decade later, it looked after gold worth than £1.3 billion – equivalent to about 11 per cent of the Treasury's reserves, with a pre-tax profit of nearly £4 million.
A BullionVault employee said: 'We are in shock at Paul's very sudden death. We will be releasing a statement in due course but at the moment we are still grieving. Our thoughts are very much with Paul's family.'
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