UPDATED – Brett Tremain: “We currently hold 9.5m REDD’s carbon certificates 2012 to 2017 vintages”

By Chris Lang

Someone called Brett Tremain recently sent the following message via LinkedIn:

I hope this finds you well, the reason for the request is we are protecting 125,000-hectare site in Para Brazil from a high deforestation and forest degradation that has been running since 2009. We currently hold 9.5m REDD’s carbon certificates 2012 to 2017 vintages. Would you be a buyer or know of any cooperation looking to neutralise their carbon footprint. Please respond even if the answer is a no, so that I do not bother you again regarding this project (time wasting prevention for us both 😊)

Best regards Brett

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UPDATE – 11 December 2020: Today, REDD-Monitor received an email from Andrew Fox at Oak Trust, the project administrators of the ADPML Portel Pará REDD project. Fox explained that, “We do have circa 9.5 mil credits and Brett has been appointed as an agent to market these.” The final paragraph in this post, about contacting Action Fraud and the Financial Conduct Authority if contacted by Brett Tremain with offers of millions of carbon credits has been removed.

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In his LinkedIn profile Tremain describes himself as being an “Executive” at something called “forestry” since January 2013. He links to the Stand For Trees website, which currently sells carbon offsets for US$12 each from a handful of REDD projects, and is funded by USAID. Tremain has nothing to do with Stand For Trees. REDD-Monitor has written to Stand for Trees to let them know.

Tremain recently added the following to his LinkedIn profile:

We have been working hard on protecting 125,000 hectares of Amazon rainforest in Brazil for the last 12 years and helping the indigenous people within. We are now looking for help from companies with a strong stance of CSR to retire out REDD credits and enable us to continue this work.

And Tremain claims, in a post on LinkedIn, to be a member of the Voluntary Carbon Task Force. He’s not, but REDD-Monitor has written to the Taskforce to let them know.

Carbon Green Solutions

On his LinkedIn profile, Tremain also describes himself as an “Exec” at a company called Carbon Green Solutions Ltd, since July 2010. That’s a red flag. In August 2011, the Financial Conduct Authority warned against Carbon Green Solutions:

Carbon Green Solutions Limited was incorporated in the UK on 24 March 2010, and dissolved two years later on 13 March 2012.

Natrocell Technoligies Limited

Before working at Carbon Green Solutions, Tremain was a director at a company called Natrocell Technologies Limited. The company was incorporated in the UK in 1995 and was dissolved on 30 November 2013. The company sold rat poison.

The company hit the headlines in November 2008 when the police raided the offices of Bishopsgate Capital Stockbrokers. The company was a boiler room operation selling shares in Natrocell. Tremain was one of the owners of Bishopgate Capital Stockbrokers. Other boiler room companies in Spain, Switzerland and Germany were selling shares in Natrocell.

The boiler rooms raised almost £2.5 million from the public. For his role in the scam, Brett Tremain was banned as a director for 12 years, starting on 24 July 2013. Andrew Penman reported in the Mirror that 60% of the money paid by retail investors went “straight into the pockets of the crooks making the cold calls”.

Donald Nelson was another director of Bishopsgate Capital Limited. In 2015, Nelson was disqualified for 15 years as a director because of his role in a scam company called Hildon Green Energy Markets Limited. The company scammed the public out of at least £3 million by selling carbon credits as investments.

REDD-Monitor wrote about Hildon Green Energy Markets Limited in May 2013:

Kenneth Noye: Brett Tremain’s father

Tremain uses his mother’s maiden name. His father is Kenneth Noye.

In 1983, six armed, masked men stole £26 million of gold, platinum, and diamonds in the Brinks Mat heist. Noye was a suspect, and police set up a surveillance operation at his home. In January 1985, Noye confronted one of the undercover police officers. Noye stabbed DC John Fordham to death. Noye pleaded self-defence and a jury cleared him of the murder.

In 1986, Noye was back in court. After an 11-week trial at the Old Bailey, he was sentenced to 14 years for conspiring to handle gold from the Brinks Mat robbery and conspiring to evade VAT payments. He was also fined £500,000 plus £200,000 costs.

Noye was released in 1994. In May 1996, he stabbed Stephen Cameron to death in a road rage attack on the M25. Noye fled the country and was arrested two years later in the south of Spain. He was eventually extradited and put on trial at the Old Bailey in March 2000. He pleaded self-defence once again, but was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released from prison in June 2019.

A 125,000-hectare REDD project in Pará

REDD-Monitor wrote to Tremain to ask for the name and location of the project, and the name of the company running this 125,000-hectare project in the Amazon.

Here’s his response:

From: Brett Tremain
Date: Thurs, 10 Dec 2020
Subject: Re: REDD Credits
To: reddmonitor@protonmail.com

Hi Chris,

Thank you for message the company is ADPML please see attached our brochure which will give you a full insight into the work we have completed are currently implementing. The VCS project number is 981 https://registry.verra.org/app/projectDetail/VCS/981 so you can view all the documentation if you have a spare week to look through it!!
We currently have circa 8.5 million units on Markit registry with another 1 million yet to draw down the breakdown is;

8.5 million 2012/17 vintages

We gain around 1.5 million units per year.

I look forward to your response and comments

Best Regards

In July 2020, a company called Kanaka Management Services Private Limited completed a Monitoring Report on the ADPML Portel Pará REDD project. The report states that,

Based on the ex-post analysis, the project avoided the net GHG emission reductions of 1,08,58,632 that after buffer reductions are equivalent to 95,82,742 tradable VCUs during 02/Jan/2012 to 31/Dec/2017.

That is presumably where Tremain gets his figure of 9.5 million “REDD’s carbon certificates 2012 to 2017 vintages”.

Tremain states that “We currently have circa 8.5 million units on Markit registry”. That is simply not true. On 9 April 2020, Verra launched its own registry. On its website, Verra explains that, “IHS Markit accounts became inactive at 5:00 pm EDT on Friday, 3 April 2020”. Accounts on the IHS Markit registry were subsequently transferred to the Verra registry.

And checking the Verra registry for the project reveals that the vast majority of credits sold from the project are in the January 2009 to December 2012 vintage period. So far, only four sales have been made of credits in the January 2013 to December 2013 vintage period. That’s a total of 60,000 credits (click on the image for a larger version):

REDD-Monitor has written to the project administrators, a company called Oak Trust, to let them know about Tremain’s claims. Incidentally, Oak Trust describes itself as the “offshore financial powerhouse” and has offices in Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Luxembourg, Malta, and Mauritius.