Response from Guy Conroy, CEO of Green IS Group Limited: “We are giving you the opportunity to correct your article or remove it until it is accurate prior to issuing any legal takedown notice”

By Chris Lang

In July 2020, REDD-Monitor wrote about a company called Green IS Group. The company offers investments in “Green Bonds”. Based on what the company itself says about the investment, I described the bonds as “an extremely high risk, completely unregulated investment”.

Green IS claims that its bonds would return a fixed profit of 7.5% per year for five years. As Offshore Alert’s David Marchant notes, “Any investment scheme with a performance chart that is essentially a diagonal line trending upwards with little or no meaningful variation over many months is a Ponzi scheme and, as such, doomed to failure.”

Green IS Group’s plantations in Brazil are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, and for a while the company used the FSC name and logo in its investment websites. Green IS Group continues to use the FSC logo, along with the statement that, “FSC® is not responsible for and does not endorse any financial claims on returns on investments.”

Guy Conroy, CEO of Green IS Group left a comment following the post on REDD-Monitor stating that, “There are many inaccuracies in your report and I’m sure you would rather have the accurate facts to report.” Predictably, Conroy didn’t point out any specific inaccuracies, or provide any “accurate facts”.

Conroy sent an email today, posted here in full. Once again Conroy states that “there are several inaccuracies” in the post on REDD-Monitor, without bothering to point out any specific inaccuracies.

From: Guy Conroy
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2020
Subject: Green IS Group: An FSC – certified Ponzi scheme
To: Chris Lang

Dear Mr Lang,

I have responded to your article on Redd-monitor.org due to our dissatisfaction with the defamatory title of the article and have tried to contact you. However you have not responded to me, so I am taking the opportunity to write to you here.

While reading the article there are several inaccuracies and I am sure you would prefer your readers to have access to the most accurate information possible.

We are a timber export company and by exporting containers of our own timber every month from our own mills and plantations in Brazil, we use the income from these exports to service all our investor returns and have successfully done so for over 5 years. Accordingly so, we have hundreds of satisfied clients who have invested with us, who have also received full capital returns as well as there quarterly income, many of which have chosen to re-invest at the end of their investment terms, such is their level of satisfaction. By definition, this does not constitute a “Ponzi Scheme”.

We are a full member of the FSC and have been since our membership started in March 2017 and the following year when we were certificated in March 2018 we have passed every audit, as i’m sure you are aware becoming a member of the FSC is not a simple process and involves may things from employment through to forestry management.

With regards the article as a whole apart from the link to companies that I have never been a director of or a controller of, then you are quite accurate in your reporting, and yes I have been involved with a lot of companies over the years from construction through to timber merchants and growers and exporters of timber.

However you will see from this that I have a considerable amount of experience in a specialist field and a huge amount of expertise within the timber market.

If you would like to have an accurate article I have previously offered and once again offer you the opportunity to visit any part of the Green IS Group either in the UK or Brazil, as we clearly have nothing to hide.

We are giving you the opportunity to correct your article or remove it until it is accurate prior to issuing any legal takedown notice.

I do hope that you will be professional enough to respond to this email with your intensions to rectify the slanderous and defamatory points in the article.

I look forward to your positive response.

Regards

Guy Conroy
C.E.O.

3 thoughts on “Response from Guy Conroy, CEO of Green IS Group Limited: “We are giving you the opportunity to correct your article or remove it until it is accurate prior to issuing any legal takedown notice””

A Ponzi scheme is something quite specific and your quote from David Merchant is quite wrong, and you shouldn’t use it. Having said that, you may be quite correct in the rest of your article.

@Jonathan Price – Thanks for this. I should perhaps have explained in a little more detail.

Here is a definition of a Ponzi scheme (from the SEC):

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors to create the false appearance that investors are profiting from a legitimate business.

David Merchant is explaining how to spot a Ponzi scheme, not describing what a Ponzi scheme is. Here’s the quotation in context, from an article titled, “How to Identify Red Flags in Investment Schemes”:

As an investigative reporter, the easiest financial crime for me to detect is a Ponzi scheme. Any investment scheme with a performance chart that is essentially a diagonal line trending upwards with little or no meaningful variation over many months is a Ponzi scheme and, as such, doomed to failure.

The level of returns do not meaningfully fluctuate because they are not related to profits or losses from any underlying business activity, as is the case with legitimate enterprises, but are paid from new money coming into the scheme. When the level of new investments inevitably drops below the amount needed to meet redemptions, operating costs, and pay-outs to insiders, it collapses.

When conducting due diligence, it doesn’t matter who is behind such a scheme. The names and professional backgrounds of management and directors are irrelevant and it is of no consequence if they don’t show up in your KYC database(s). A diagonal line equals fraud, end of story….

When evaluating the credibility of an investment product, it is important to understand that, even in good-faith schemes, anyone who solicits money from third-parties does not know whether an investment will grow, shrink or disappear. If they had a sure thing, they would put their own money into it and not solicit funds from others. All projected and simulated returns are worthless and their inclusion on marketing material is a red flag. The only honest sales pitch is: Your investment might go up or down and I’ll do my best to achieve the former. Anyone claiming otherwise is, by definition, lying or incompetent.

If Guy Conroy sent a letter to ALL his clients who have invested in these highly suspect non-regulated bonds with this line –

“we have hundreds of satisfied clients who have invested with us, who have also received full capital returns as well as there quarterly income, many of which have chosen to re-invest at the end of their investment terms, such is their level of satisfaction.”

I’d love to see their replies…

3 thoughts on “Response from Guy Conroy, CEO of Green IS Group Limited: “We are giving you the opportunity to correct your article or remove it until it is accurate prior to issuing any legal takedown notice””

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