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”

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.