Millionaire Brit gold trader dies in horror crash in front of daughter after motorbike slams head-on into van in Spain
Paul Gerard Tustain, 62, was killed on a road near the n
orthern Spanish town of Pamplona when his bike strayed onto the wrong side of the road.
6
Paul Tustain, 62, was killed when his motorbike smashed into a van during a tour of Spain
Credit: Solarpix
6
The front of the van was severely crumpled by the crash
Credit: Solarpix
6
Tustain's bike had strayed onto the wrong side of the road
Credit: Solarpix
Tustain, originally from Cambridgeshire but who lived in London, was the founder and chairman of BullionVault - the world's largest online bullion investment service.
He also ran WhiskyInvestDirect.com
, which organised bulk crowdfunding of in-barrel Scotch whisky maturation.
He was riding a rented BMW motorbike and smashed head-on with a van on Thursday afternoon.
His daughter was riding on another motorbike behind him, and the pair are understood to have been completing a tour of Spain.
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They were heading for the town of Logrono when the
tragedy happened.
A spokesman for local
police
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.
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'Otherwise it's likely to have been a fatal distraction. The force of the impact was brutal.'
Emergency services got the call around 1.40pm on Thursday.
Tragic Ferrari Crash: British Couple Die in Spanish Rally Horror
An air ambulance rushed to the scene along with ground medics,
police
and
firefighters - but there was nothing they could do.
The tragedy struck on a stretch of the NA-1110 road between Azketa and Iratxe.
Pictures from the crash scene showed the white van with its front smashed, across the road from the motorbike.
A spokesman for local firefighters said: 'We were called yesterday afternoon about a front-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.'
6
Investigators are considering that Tustain could have suffered a medical episode
Credit: Solarpix
6
There was nothing the van driver could do to avoid the collision
Credit: Solarpix
6
Tustain's daughter was riding behind him and saw the whole thing
Credit: Solarpix
A another emergency-services spokesperson said: 'A motorcyclist died Thursday afternoon after colliding with a van on the NA-1110 road, in the municipality of Iguzquiza
'The emergency management centre received notice of the accident at 13:38 hours on Thursday and sent firefighters to the scene along with a medical team, an advanced life support medicalised ambulance, a basic life support ambulance, a medical helicopter and police traffic patrols.
'The accident occurred when the motorcyclist collided head-on with a van at kilometer point 42.4 of the NA-1110 road.
'The emergency services mobilized could do nothing to save the life of the motorcyclist, a 62 year old man, who died at the scene.
'His body was taken to the Navarra Institute of Legal
Medicine
for an autopsy. A police
investigation
into the accident is underway.'
A BullionVault employee said today: '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.'
Before venturing into the finance and investment sector Paul founded SAM Systems which specialised in mid and back office functions of the banking and stockbroking sectors.
Tustain previously told how he got into 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 more than $1.3 billion - equivalent to about 11 per cent of the Treasury's reserves, with a pre-tax profit of nearly £4million.
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