Carbon credit fraudster Sami Raja appeals his prison sentence. While he carries on scamming in Dubai

By Chris Lang

In January 2019, Sami Raja was sentenced to eight years in prison at Southwark Crown Court. He was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering. Between January 2012 and August 2013, Raja and others miss-sold carbon credits to 130 retail investors. Two companies were involved in the £2.4 million fraud: Harman Royce Ltd and Kendrick Zale Ltd.

In addition to Harman Royce and Kendrick Zale, Raja also worked at Heron Global Partners. Renwick Haddow’s Bar Works was just one of the scam investments that Heron Global Partners promoted.

Raja on the run

But Raja was not in court to hear his sentence. He fled to Dubai instead.

A couple of weeks later, Raja put out a press release announcing that his Dubai-based company, Sami Raja Consultancy, planned to expand.

In May 2019, Raja appealed his sentence and conviction, from Dubai.

Until the appeal is heard, Raja will not be extradited from Dubai. A spokeswoman for the City of London Police told Money Marketing that,

“Sami Raja is appealing both his convictions and sentence. The Crown Prosecution Service will not file for extradition until the appeal is done.”

Sami Raja Consultancy

In February 2019, REDD-Monitor pointed out that the testimonials on Sami Raja Consultancy’s website were fake. The testimonials subsequently disappeared from the website. But the website is still there.

The website was re-registered anonymously on 29 January 2019.

Despite such a short history, the company claims that “Sami Raja Consultancy is one of the most trusted names in company formation in the UK and UAE”.

There is no information on the website about where the company is registered. The website doesn’t give an office address. And a search on Open Corporates reveals nothing.

Raja also features on two more extremely dubious looking company websites.

Sol Taylor Investment

The first company, “Sol Taylor Investment”, claims to be “one of the leading investment firms in the United Kingdom”. That’s pretty impressive for a company whose website was only registered (anonymously, of course) on 29 January 2019.

But guess what? There is no such company registered in the UK.

The address given (“London, UK, 36 Crown Street”) has been a construction site since 2017. Before then it was the Daallo Sport Cafe. Here’s what it looked like in April 2019:

Sol Taylor is supposed to have studied “Finances” at Oxford from 1995 to 1999. A photograph of the Radcliffe Camera on the website gives the impression that Taylor studied at Oxford University. But there is no course in “Finances” at Oxford. There are courses on Financial Strategy, Finance, and Financial Economics, but they are all post graduate courses.

Taylor is also supposed to have gained an MBA in Business Management and Administration at Brunei University from 1997 to 1999 – the last two years of his “Finances” course at Oxford. Crikey.

Perhaps even more impressive, Taylor was born in 1979. So he started his post graduate studies at Oxford Univeristy when he was only 16.

Needless to say, the image of “Sol Taylor” on the company’s website is a stock photo, as a search for the image on Google reveals:

Foras Group

“Skip mistakes and do things right the first time”, is the catchy slogan of the Foras Group Business Consultancy. The company’s website explains why investing in Dubai is a good idea.

The “About us” page displays the company’s love of minimalism:

The other pages about “Strategy”, “Marketing”, “Performance Investing”, don’t provide much more information about either the company, or what it does.

The company claims to have 10 years experience, but the website was registered anonymously on 31 January 2019.

Foras Group claims to have “already helped” four companies. All of the companies have a logo and the words “company slogan” on the Foras Group website:

Both Foras Group and Sol Taylor Investments feature a series of photographs of Raja. On the Foras Group website, Raja tells us, “Your style is your brand, so always think about how you look.”

And here is Raja, presumably thinking about how he looks: