Skip to content
Menu
REDD-Monitor
  • Start here
  • About REDD-Monitor
  • REDD: An introduction
  • Contact
REDD-Monitor

MH Carbon goes into voluntary liquidation

Posted on 13 May 201315 October 2015
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

In January 2013, REDD-Monitor wrote about MH Carbon, a company selling carbon credits to the public as investments. REDD-Monitor’s question, as with any company doing this, is whether the company is a boiler room scam. Last week, MH Carbon went into voluntary liquidation.

According to a notice on MH Carbon’s website a company called Parker Andrews in Norwich, UK, that specialises in insolvency “has been instructed to deal with the liquidation of carbon credit trader MH Carbon”. The notice, which is not dated, explains that MH Carbon will be “placed into voluntary liquidation shortly”. However, only creditors have been contacted about the liquidation. People who bought carbon credits from MH Carbon “will not receive official notification of the liquidation”.

Liquidation is the process of closing a company and selling off the company’s assets and property (in order to pay off the company’s creditors, for example). Voluntary liquidation is supported by the company’s shareholders, as opposed to the company being forced into liquidation by creditors or a court order.

In the case of MH Carbon, the company’s shares are 100% owned by a company called PCS Nominee Limited, which is registered in the Isle of Man.

REDD-Monitor’s post about MH Carbon attracted a large number of comments (currently more than 160 comments) many of which are from people who have bought carbon credits and are concerned that they are victims of a fraud.

I wrote to the director of MH Carbon, Jeffrey Razaq, to ask him what the implications of the liquidation are for people who bought carbon credits from MH Carbon. The email was returned, with an error message stating that, “it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain mhcarbon.com”.

I have also written to Parker Andrews to ask the same question.

MH Carbon’s voluntary liquidation raises several questions. As far as I am aware, the company only sold carbon credits. Last year, MH Carbon claimed to be, “one of the UK’s fastest growing participants in emissions spot trading within the voluntary carbon credit market”. It seems a reasonably safe bet that MH Carbon bought the carbon credits for less than its brokers sold them for. So where do the company’s debts come from? And where did the money go from the sales of carbon credits?

In the company’s annual accounts for 2012, MH Carbon had about £1.7 million in assets and about £1.6 million owed to creditors. MH Carbon has not filed this year’s accounts with Companies House. So how did the company manage to become insolvent? Is the company going into liquidation because too many clients are asking for their money back? Or is the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau getting too close?

Jeffrey Razaq is also director of two other companies that include “MH” in their names: Mh Carbon Nominees Limited and Mh Commodity Brokers Limited.

It’s interesting to note that Anna Rickard was a director of Mh Carbon Nominees until 24 October 2012 – the date that Jeffrey Razaq took over as director of MH Carbon and Mh Carbon Nominees. Anna Rickard is the director of Citadel Trustees, a company that used to act as an “Appointed Custodian” to Worldwide Commodity Partners, another company selling carbon credits to the public as an investment. All the shares in Mh Carbon Nominees are owned by Citadel Secretarial Services Limited and Citadel Nominees Limited.

On 14 January 2013, Lee Thompson, the director of Worldwide Commodity Partners wrote to the company’s clients explaining that, “As part of the negotiations between our companies it has been agreed that MH-Carbon will take over our portfolio in full.”

When journalist Tony Hetherington asked Anna Rickard some questions about Citadel Trustees’ role, she replied, “It would only be unethical for Citadel Trustees to knowingly and intentionally involve itself in a scam.”

According to comments on REDD-Monitor (here, here, here, here and here), a Luxembourg-based company, Carbon-ex S.à r.l., is also involved in the sale of MH Carbon’s carbon credits.

It will be interesting to see how the voluntary liquidation proceeds and how much of the tangled web of carbon credit deceit begins to unravel as a result.
 

Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on LinkedIn
Linkedin
Share on Facebook
Facebook
Email this to someone
email

Related

5 thoughts on “MH Carbon goes into voluntary liquidation”

  1. Mike says:
    14 May 2013 at 3:21 pm

    All clients of MH Carbon should write to the liquidator and make a claim for mis-selling/misrepresentation. Voluntary liquidation is an easy way out for them. You won’t get your money back (as the company doesn’t have many assets) but the liquidator may be forced to refer the case to the Insolvency Service who may put them into forced liquidation. What is the difference? Big. Forced liquidation gives you much greater strength to then go after the directors. They may be banned from other directorships. More will come out about the mystery shareholders. Don’t hesitate. Write today.

  2. Lu says:
    15 May 2013 at 2:20 pm

    I have set up a simple forum for discussion about carbon credits.
    It is about the various scams and the market in general. The idea is to provide a focal point and to pool our ideas together to find a way out.
    It is a public forum and can be used by everyone so be a bit careful about revealing your identity etc.

    Chris gave me permission to post this.

    http://carboncredits.proboards.com

    Cheers

  3. Chris Lang says:
    15 May 2013 at 2:26 pm

    @Lu (#2) – Thanks for this.

    Your forum looks interesting, but I’m not sure that raising people’s hopes of selling their VERs (exit strategies) is the way forward. I think the best plan is to get as many people as possible to report as many of these companies as possible to Action Fraud. Getting more journalists involved in writing on the topic and exposing the fraud would also help.

  4. Lu says:
    15 May 2013 at 2:42 pm

    I don’t disagree. It is just a way of centralising the comments to make it easier to keep a track of and to communicate with each other. I don’t run articles on it. I think it may be a long slog to sell our VERs or to get compensation so my hopes are not up much.

  5. Tom Macpherson says:
    5 October 2015 at 5:07 pm

    Hi Chris, many thanks for keeping us informed about carbon credits and the outcome, basically anybody who bought carbon credits has lost some or all of their money and this includes me I think as you say once the credits are finally recognized as a trading product legally (not sure if they are) and have a value with genuine brokers who are registered etc we will never see are money back, may be, just maybe one day this might happen but I am very doubtful so in other words its an investment we have too write off I’m afraid (although it something none of us want too) Tom

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

SUBSCRIBE!

Enter your email address to receive notification of new posts.

Recent themes
Natural Climate Solutions
WWF's conservation scandals
Aviation and offsetting
Conservation Watch

REDDisms

“As a whole, Indonesia has one third of the world’s total coastal carbon content. The idea is to get the country’s mangroves into the policy fold and start monetising them. Blue carbon is an additional ecosystem service that allows communities to have access to international funding mechanisms such as carbon markets and other funding opportunities.”

— Jennifer Howard, Marine Climate Change Director at Conservation International, June 2015

Recent Posts

  • Capitalism is driving us to disaster
  • How REDD greenwashes Glencore’s coal mining operations in Colombia
  • The Durban Declaration on Carbon Trading
  • Book review: “Forest Conservation and Sustainability in Indonesia” by Bernice Maxton-Lee
  • Plant for the Planet: Felix Finkbeiner’s fake forests

Recent Comments

  • st john on Bar Works: The return of Renwick Haddow
  • Gordon Emery on Capitalism is driving us to disaster
  • Jonathan Price (@B3CPres) on Capitalism is driving us to disaster
  • Mrs Linda Knight on Savraj Gata-Aura sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the Bar Works investment scam
  • Chris Lang on Bar Works: The return of Renwick Haddow

Issues and Organisations

AB 32 Boiler rooms Bonn California Can REDD save ... ? Carbon accounting Carbon Credits Carbon Offsets CDM Conservation-Watch Conservation International COP21 Paris Deforestation FCPF FERN Financing REDD Forest definition Fossil fuels FPP Friends of the Earth FSC Greenpeace Guest post ICAO Illegal logging Indigenous Peoples Natural Climate Solutions NGO statements Plantations Poznan R-M interview REDD and rights REDD in the news Risk RSPO-Watch Safeguards Sengwer Sustainable Forest Management The Nature Conservancy Ulu Masen UN-REDD UNFCCC World Bank WRM WWF

Countries

Australia Bolivia Brazil Cambodia Cameroon Canada China Colombia Congo Basin region DR Congo Ecuador El Salvador European Union France Germany Guatemala Guyana Honduras India Indonesia Kenya Laos Luxembourg Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Republic of Congo Sweden Tanzania Thailand Uganda UK Uncategorized United Arab Emirates USA Vietnam West Papua
©2021 REDD-Monitor | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!