Response from Salya Group: “Please could you kindly remove this link … with the upmost urgency”

Three weeks ago, REDD-Monitor wrote a post about three carbon credit fraud suspects who are wanted in Germany for tax evasion and money laundering. On Sunday, I received an email from “AS” at Salya Group accusing me of having “wrongfully written your blog” and requesting that the post is removed.

The German authorities are looking for three men: Ashraf Muhammad, Mobeen Iqbal, and Mohsin Usmangani Salya. The first two are from Pakistan and the third is British. “AS” is concerned about the mention of Mohsin Salya in the article on REDD-Monitor.

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UPDATE – 31 January 2017: In November 2016, Mohsin Salya was sentenced to three years and three months in jail for tax evasion:

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Here are three photographs of Mohsin Salya, from the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) website:

And here’s the email that REDD-Monitor received from “AS”:

From: AS as@salya.com
Date: 15 May 2016 at 08:33
Subject: Chris Lang – Mohsin Salya article -Redd-Monitor website
To: reddmonitor@gmail.com
 
Dear Sirs,
 
I write to you in relation to the blog you have written which is highly damaging for our group. Please kindly note that we reserve our legal rights against you for defamation and there is no immediate court action incurred by the facts of your blog. It is “suspected” and no court documents or international warrants have been issued. You have wrongfully written your blog and neither do you have any legal privilege on these facts.
 
Please could you kindly remove this link at the with the upmost urgency as it is highly damaging our group , family and relatives. Please note I cannot comment on the other parties and I am only interested with the news and comments of Mohsin Usmangani Salya
 
Warm Regards
 
Salya Group
 
http://redd-monitor.org/2016/04/27/three-carbon-credit-fraud-suspects-wanted-in-germany-for-tax-evasion-and-money-laundering/

Contrary to the Salya Group’s statement that no international warrants have been issued, the BKA website has the following to say about Mohsin Salya:

SALYA is suspected of causing damage in excess of EUR 125.6 million to the detriment of the Federal Republic of Germany between September 2009 and April 2010. He has numerous contacts abroad, in particular in the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates (Dubai) and Pakistan, and he is a central figure acting in the background of this VAT missing trader fraud scheme.
 
SALYA is the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Who is “AS”?

The email from the Salya Group came from someone calling themselves “AS”. His full name is Aadiel Salya, a solicitor in Walton Le Dale, Preston. Here’s his LinkedIn account:

In February 2016 Aadiel Salya was one of seven men that the City of London police charged with conspiracy to defraud for his role in a £950,000 medical invoice fraud.

Three of the men have pleaded guilty. This is Lancashire reports that Aadiel Salya and Yasin Salya are due to appear at Liverpool Crown Court in June 2016 to make representation for the charges against them to be dismissed.

What is the Salya Group?

Aadiel Salya’s father is Usman Salya, the chairman of the Salya Group. Usman Salya was born in 1953 in Gujarat, India. He moved to England in the 1960s, and in the 1980s started a business making jeans for Wrangler, Lee, Levis and others.

He branched out into property development and formed Salya Homes. In 2006, Usman Salya, encouraged by his “football-mad” son, agreed to sponsor Preston North End football club.

Salya Homes was dissolved on 30 November 2012. The company was registered in 2002 as Salya Apparel Limited and changed its name to Salya Homes in 2004. When the company was dissolved it was called Rupidus Limited.

Usman Salya has been director of 17 companies. Sixteen of them are dissolved. Today, none of the companies have “Salya” in their company names. All of them previously did. Many of the companies have had several names, often changed again a few days after the word “Salya” was removed from the company name. For example, on 1 October 2010, Salya Investments Limited was renamed as Keters Limited. Six days later, the name was changed again to Ketters Limited.

Here’s a list, with the date that the word “Salya” disappeared from the company name, and the current name linked to the company’s records at Companies House:

According to its website, the Salya Group is currently involved in construction, real estate, investments, commodities trading, and recruitment. In 2008, the Salya Group was planning to invest more than US$1 billion in Dubai. Not all of these investments worked out as planned.

Here’s a screenshot of the Salya Group’s website:

Clicking on the “Commodities Training” image takes us to a company calling itself “Angel Commodities”, or perhaps Angle Commodities – there seems to be some confusion.

The website was registered anonymously in November 2015.

On its website Angel Commodities provides no information about the company, but it does claim that, “Since its inception in 2010 Angel Commodities has evolved and grown to become one of the leaders in its field.” The “About” page of the website is particularly unhelpful:

Each new business oppurtunities offers valuable experiences and enables us to provide the service that we are use to , It also provides mutual growth in trading for both Angel Commodities with our valued clients and International Associations.

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