Response from Oak Trust: “We do have circa 9.5 mil credits and Brett has been appointed as an agent to market these”

Yesterday, REDD-Monitor wrote about Brett Tremain and his offer of 9.5 million “REDD’s carbon certificates 2012 to 2017 vintages”. Tremain previously worked at a company called Carbon Green Solutions Ltd. The Financial Conduct Authority warned against the company in 2011. Tremain was subsequently banned as a director for his role in a boiler room company called Bishopsgate Capital Stockbrokers that sold shares in Natrocell Technologies Limited, a rat poison company.

Tremain’s father is Kenneth Noye, a gangster involved in the 1983 Brink’s-Mat bullion heist.

When I asked Tremain about the carbon credits, his reply was not reassuring. He claimed, for example, that the credits were on the IHS Markit registry, despite the fact that Verra launched its own registry in April 2020, and accounts from the IHS Markit registry have been transferred to the Verra registry.

On his LinkedIn page, Tremain links to Stand for Trees. In yesterday’s post, I pointed out that Tremain has nothing to do with Stand for Trees. I wrote to Stand for Trees. “Brett Tremain has never had anything to do with our organization, and we have no dealings with him,” a Stand for Trees spokesperson replied. “This is a falsification.”

I also wrote to Andrew Fox, a managing director at the Oak Trust, the project administrators for the ADPML Portel Pará REDD project. Here is Fox’s reply in full:

From: Andrew Fox
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020
Subject: RE: ADPML Portel Pará REDD project
To: Chris Lang
Cc: Kevin Tremain

Hi Chris

We do have circa 9.5 mil credits and Brett has been appointed as an agent to market these.

Of the 9,5 mil tons we have about 3-4 mil that we would look to sell presently.

Kind regards

Andrew

That, to put it mildly, came as a surprise. REDD-Monitor has updated yesterday’s post about Brett Tremain, and provided a link to this post.

Fox’s email is copied to Kevin Tremain, Brett’s brother. On his LinkedIn profile, Tremain states that he is “Director of PATH PROPERTY GROUP LTD also founder OF ADPML”. Yet a search for Kevin Tremain and ADPML or Avoided Deforestation Project (Manaus) Limited, reveals little. Avoided Deforestation Project (Manaus) Limited was incorporated in Guernsey on 30 July 2010.

On 6 August 2020, Kevin Tremain incorporated a company in the UK called Amazon Forest People Ltd. The corporate brochure of the ADPML Portel Pará REDD project (that Brett Tremain sent to REDD-Monitor yesterday) explains that,

In 2020 we updated our brand name from ADPML to Amazon Forest People (AFP), allowing us to borrow from the characteristics of the region to create authenticity. Our brand name Amazon Forest People unites us by identifying the origin of where we work and the livelihoods we strive to support and protect.

The corporate brochure makes no mention of either of the Tremain brothers. Andrew Fox is listed as director of Amazon Forest People and ADPML:

The corporate brochure states that, “We have been successfully validated and verified against the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and validated to the CCB Standards Second Edition – achieving Climate Adaption and Biodiversity Gold Levels.” Variations of this statement are repeated three times in the brochure, giving the impression that the project is currently validated under the CCB (Climate, Community and Biodiversity) Standards.

But the CCB Project Validation Report is dated 28 March 2013. The audit took place more than eight years ago – from 16 July to 31 July 2012. The Verra web-page for the project shows that the CCB validation for the project has expired.

The corporate brochure reveals that in 2019, the project sold a total of 27,494 carbon credits for US$68,036.76. That’s an average of slightly less than US$2.50 each. The cost of selling these carbon credits was US$65,526.76, leaving a profit of only US$2,510. Expenses for Code REDD came to US$10,538.76. The ADPML Portel Pará REDD is no longer listed on the Code REDD or Stand for Trees websites. In total, the project lost US$218,622.33 in 2019.

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