Crime Solicitors

An investigation by the Insolvency Service has led to four directors of the carbon credit investment company World Future Limited being disqualified for a total of 42-and-a-half years for misselling.

In January 2017, Edward George Lee became the last of the four to agree to a disqualification with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Lee, 71, Essex, accepted a four-year, six-month disqualification, which commenced on 6 February 2017.

In 2015 and 2016, his fellow directors – James Laurence Ward, 31, London, Hollie Emily Chapman, 31, Essex, and Julie Margaret Sellers, 55, Croydon – had accepted disqualifications of between 12 and 14 years.

The disqualifications follow an investigation by the Official Receiver, whose involvement commenced with the winding up of the company in the public interest. The winding up order was initiated following a company investigations probe into the affairs of the company.

The Official Receiver’s investigation uncovered that, between June 2011 and March 2012, World Future sold voluntary emission reduction carbon credits (VERs) to members of the public as an investment – and profited by at least £2,484,500.

Ward acted as a director of World Future throughout its trading life without being formally appointed and traded with a lack of commercial probity by selling VERs as investments that had no potential to show a return to investors. He was only formally appointed as a director after the trading had ceased.

Chapman, Sellers and Lee were appointed as directors at various times, but took no part in the day-to-day trading of World Future. Their inaction facilitated Ward and another individual to control World Future allowing it to trade without commercial probity whilst concealing their involvement, the investigation found.

Official Receiver in the Public Interest Unit, Anthony Hannon, said:

“This company held itself out as having extensive expertise in the carbon credit market – and made bold claims about the potential returns available when investing in carbon credits. The directors and salespeople had no such trading experience and were only able to make sales on the basis of systematic misrepresentations about the VERs they sold. The truth is that the VERs were impossible to resell, making them worthless as investments. The company was run entirely for the benefit of those running it, at substantial cost to the investors, who had been misled. The lengthy periods of disqualification in this case show that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated by the Insolvency Service.”

Duncan Lewis Business Crime Solicitors

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