By Chris Lang
Kendrick Zale used to sell carbon credits to retail investors. On 16 July 2014, in the High Court in London, the company was wound up in the public interest for making false claims about investment returns.
The company sold carbon credits for £3 and claimed that their value would increase to £7.80 or £8 within 18 months. In the six months of the scam Kendrick Zale had scammed the public out of at least £1.1 million.
Kendrick Zale was registered as a company in March 2013. The sole director was Manjeet Matharu.
Since September 2013, visitors to the Kendrick Zale website have been diverted to a notice from the City of London Police:
Richard Smith at Naked Capitalism reports that Kendrick Zale was “busted by the City of London Police as a fraud” in early September 2013. Yet three months later, Kendrick Zale was still listed as one of Gemmax Solutions “Clearing Members”. Gemmax Solutions is a company previously known as Carbon Neutral Investments.
The company’s website has gone, but here’s an archived copy from archive.org, dated 22 June 2014. And here’s some of the complete nonsense that Kendrick Zale used to convince its unsuspecting and vulnerable clients (who were typically over 60 and over 80 in some cases) to part with their cash:
Kendrick Zale was closed following an investigation by the Insolvency Service. David Hill, a Chief Investigator with the Insolvency Service, welcomed the court’s decision to close the company:
“No one should be left in any doubt that the Insolvency Service will continue to take robust action whenever serious failings are discovered and in particular against contemptible companies as in this case, preying on vulnerable investors.”
All of which is fine, except for the people who lost between them £1.1 million. Closing down the company after the scam has happened does not get anyone’s money back. Neither does it prevent the people behind the scam from moving on to the next scam.
What can we expect when even the bankers who lost tens of billions of pounds of depositors’ and taxpayers’ money have not been banned as directors? There is something seriously wrong with the law when companies become insolvent or close to insolvency through clear wrongdoing by directors. Seems these guys almost always walk away, especially if they have lost ‘loadsamoney’…
Did they get their money back?
@Lee Goldthorpe – No. As I wrote in the post, “Closing down the company after the scam has happened does not get anyone’s money back.”
There are loads of these firms out there selling carbon credits, diamonds etc. ones that have gone bust also include Sebastian Arkwright. If anyone has been scammed by them please let me know to see if we can jointly take action against the directors. Thanks, Alan
I too am up for us all grouping together having put a substantial amount of money in with people I trusted.
At the moment feel frustrated at the lack of action taken by the authorities.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/carbon-credit-scammers-choke-on-lengthy-periods-of-disqualification
@Anon – Thanks for the link!