WE’RE WATCHING YOU 2

TWO South London men who raked in £37million from 2,000 investors who thought their savings were going into an ethical scheme to plant trees have been convicted of conspiracy to defraud. The verdicts came on Tuesday at Southwark Crown Court, and Andrew Skeene and his business partner Junie Bowers will be sentenced at a later date.

The pair launched Global Forestry Investments in 2009, advertising a return of 12 per cent a year from growing teak trees in Brazil. They claimed their plantations would generate sustainable forestry and support local communities. I found then that Skeene was already behind a dodgy scheme promising a guaranteed 30 per cent yield from property developments in Dubai, and I warned it was unlicensed, unregulated and unsafe.

I advised anyone considering the forestry scheme not to be fooled by an ethical label.

Bowers hit back with fake messages on financial websites, alleging I provided illegal share tips and was myself under investigation for fraud.

In 2014, the teak tree scheme collapsed and Skeene and Bowers were declared bankrupt, though investigators from the Insolvency Service found that over £13million intended for plantations had ended up in their own bank accounts. In 2015, the Serious Fraud Office announced an investigation and in 2019 the two men were charged with fraud.

After the trial, SFO chief Lisa Osofsky said: ‘Our international investigation exposed an intricate web of money transfers, forged documents and invented identities used to scam pensioners and savers out of their money under the false pretence of environmental protection.’