Director banned for 15 years over gold and carbon credits

AN investment boss who was behind the sale of shares in a fraudulent gold mining scheme and used a separate scam to sell carbon credits at a 132 per cent mark-up has been banned from acting as a company director for the next 15 years – the maximum ban allowed.

Harvey Edwin Bennett, 48, from Romford in Essex, was the sole director of Evolution Trade Services Limited.

Investigators from the Insolvency Service found the company purchased carbon credits for £1.06 but sold them on for £2.46 with the false claim they would rise in value and show a profit. The company’s sales totalled £828,860.

The Mail on Sunday warned in 2015 that a web of companies linked to Bennett was a scam and there was no two-way market through which investors could turn their credits back into cash at any price. Bennett also controlled a network of companies that sold investments in Santo Montana LLP, a business which was said to own three gold mining concessions in Peru and elsewhere in South America.

The Insolvency Service won a High Court order in 2016 to shut down the scheme. Its investigation found no evidence that Santo Montana owned any gold mining interests and found that £388,000 paid by investors went mainly to Bennett himself and his salesforce.

The sale of stakes in Santo Montana was illegal. But Bennett has not been prosecuted and no action has been taken to recover investors’ money.

Bennett was once an authorised investment adviser and still appears on the Financial Conduct Authority’s register of approved advisers, where he is listed as ‘inactive’ but with a clean record.