Tony Hetherington on Living Investments UK’s Nick Durrant: “Like handling a particularly slippery eel that has been given a generous coating of Vaseline”

By Chris Lang

In March 2022, REDD-Monitor wrote about two companies: Living Investments UK and Hyperion Management. Both companies offered investments in teak and bamboo plantations in Costa Rica (Living Investments UK since 2010). The investments looked too good to be true because they were too good to be true. Both companies are boiler room scams, yet the authorities in the UK have taken no action against either company, or against Nick Durrant, the man behind both companies.

Two weeks ago, Tony Hetherington wrote about this teak tree investment scam in the Financial Mail on Sunday. “C.G.” had written to Hetherington about a series of investments in Living Investments UK from 2011, totalling £31,976. “C.G.” has written to Durrant 13 times without getting a response. Payments that should have been made in 2014, 2017, 2020 are long overdue.

“C.G” was one of several investors that contacted Hetherington about this investment. “The complaints are almost identical,” Hetherington writes. “Durrant is not at the London address he uses, letters are unanswered, calls are not returned, questions are unresolved, and if you get a response it is evasive or untrue.”

Hetherington contacted Durrant in May 2022. He describes dealing with Durrant as “like handling a particularly slippery eel that has been given a generous coating of Vaseline”.

Living Investments UK

The first problem is that although Living Investments UK gives an address at 14 Grenville Street, London EC1N 8SB, there is no company called Living Investments UK registered at Companies House (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Hetherington writes that Living Investments UK is “just a trading name used by Durrant, though he fails to act lawfully and disclose this”. Hetherington found out that Durrant lives in a “splendid rented house in Oxford which was advertised with a £5,000 a month rent”.

Durrant told Hetherington that, “I do not own and never set up Living Investments but I was an employee of theirs.” Durrant dropped the “UK” in the company name in his reply to Hetherington. “Living Investments is registered in the British Virgin Islands,” Hetherington writes, “where secrecy laws mean whoever runs it remains anonymous, and Durrant can blame these ghosts for anything and everything.”

Durrant would not say who owns Living Investments. He claims to be a “custodian”, supposedly protecting investors. He even claims that, “I constantly keep in communication with them.” This is simply not true – unless he’s referring to the invoices that Living Investments has recently sent out to investors for the maintenance of the plantations in Costa Rica.

Hyperion Investment

Nick Durrant is also director of a company called Hyperion Management (London) Limited. Durrant told Hetherington that, “This is not associated with Living Investments.” But the two companies share the same phone number.

And elsewhere on the website, Hyperion Investments offers clients “the opportunity to invest in 3 – 4 years old teak trees and 9 – 10 years old trees” in Costa Rica.

When I wrote about Hyperion Managment in March 2022, the home page of the company’s website carried a notice saying, “Sorry, we’re down for maintenance” with a promise that “Website is Coming Soon. Very, very soon.” The website still has the same notice about being down for maintenance. And the same promise is still there.

Durrant’s lawyers

“When my questions became too awkward,” Hetherington writes, “Durrant hired lawyers to threaten to sue me if we published [C.G.’s] letter.” The solicitors claimed that C.G. had twice written to Hetherington asking him to scrap the complaint. “I can confirm this is untrue,” Hetherington writes.

In fact, C.G. asked Hetherington to continue with his research into Living Investments UK.

The solicitors insisted that Hetherington sent questions to them rather than to Durrant. Hetherington notes that they failed to answer almost every question he asked.

The solicitors told Hetherington that, “We have been instructed by our client that he was a sales employee of Living Investments UK; he was at no time an owner of the business.” But the solicitors declined to say who employed Durrant at Living Investments UK, which in any case didn’t actually exist.

“Startling” invoices

Durrant recently travelled to Costa Rica to take a look at the plantations, and to the US where he claims to have a deal to sell the timber to a wholesaler in Winchester, Virginia, USA at “$12 per board foot”.

In the last few weeks, Durrant has sent a series of invoices to investors for maintenance of the plantations. Hetherington describes the invoices as “startling”:

They include large payments for ‘nominee directors’ – front men who put their names to companies with the result that their true owners and controllers are unknown. And there are legal fees linked to structuring the entire scheme so it falls outside the legal remit of the Financial Conduct Authority.

Together with the invoices, Durrant sent a “Newsletter to all investors in the Living Investments project in Costa Rica” dated June 2022. This tells investors that the plantations will be thinned, but that “It is difficult to determine at this stage what the commercial value of the thinnings will be, as there are several options needing to be evaluated to obtain the best value for investors.”

In the newsletter, Living Investments UK explains that, “The timber cannot be sold in Costa Rica, as the market is dominated by Indian buyers who do not pay a fair market value. There are several cost factors to be considered, which will be paid for out of maintenance fees.”

This newsletter comes 12 years after Living Investments UK had taken its first payments from investors. Needless to say, when they handed over their cash, investors were unaware that the timber could not be sold in Costa Rica. Instead, they were told there would be, “No Inheritance Tax after owning commercial forestry for 2 years” and that the investment was, “Low volatility,” with “strong potential returns”. It was, according to Living Investments UK, an opportunity to “Turn £33,000 into £161,266 over the next 15 years with a unique ethical investment.”

For an impression of what Living Investments UK told potential investors about the teak plantation investment, here’s a corporate brochure dated 2010, and another dated 2013.

The author of the newsletter (according to the properties of the .pdf file) was Anthony Robertson – Hetherington notes that Robertson is an accountant at Money Books Limited. Robertson is also an investor in the scheme.

Robertson told Hetherington that he had trouble getting the information that Durrant had promised. He told Hetherington that, “I am afraid this does not bode well for the state of our investments, as I find myself no longer able to trust him with anything he says.”

Robertson pleaded with Hetherington not to write anything about Living Investments UK, in case it made Durrant quit, leaving the scheme to fall apart. “But how could the departure of a British salesman cause the collapse of a genuine forestry scheme thousands of miles away?” Hetherington asks.

Full legal investigation urgently needed

Durrant wrote to Hetherington on 18 August 2022. Durrant told him that he had discovered that the owners of the business planned to abandon it. “I was appalled by that,” Durrant added.

Durrant explained to Hetherington that, “I then legally agreed to look after the existing clients, with legal conditions that I have no association with Living Investments and that there was no responsibility.”

Hetherington sums this up as follows:

So, the salesman who flies to Costa Rica to ‘inspect’ the trees has no responsibility. The salesman who says he has sold the timber in the USA has no responsibility. And he cannot or will not identify whoever it is that does have responsibility.

And Hetherington comments that this “screams out” for a full legal investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority or perhaps the Insolvency Service. To which we could add the City of London Police, the Serious Fraud Office, and the National Crime Agency.