Verra has suspended the Pacajai / ADPML Portel-Pará REDD project. The project developer faces a legal case over land grabbing. Local communities say they have not received benefits from the project

And Brink’s-Mat gangster Kenneth Noye lives in the headquarters of Amazon Forest People Limited, the company supposedly running the project

PHOTO Credit: Amazon Forest People’s website - which disappeared shortly after The Mirror started asking questions.

The Pacajai REDD+ Project covers an area of 148,975 hectares in the municipality of Portel in the state of Pará, Brazil. It was previously called the ADPML Portel Pará REDD project. The change of name came not long after REDD-Monitor wrote about the project in December 2020:

This is an extraordinary story, recently investigated by Tom Pettifor, Crime Editor at The Mirror.

The project is run by a company called ADPML, which was incorporated in 2010 in the tax haven of Guernsey. Kevin Tremain claimed to have founded the company. He later denied it, telling Pettifor he was a consultant.

Kevin’s brother Brett was hired to sell 9.5 million carbon credits from the project. Brett Tremain was previously involved in a scam company called Carbon Green Solutions and a boiler room operation called Bishopsgate Capital Stockbrokers. In 2013, Brett Tremain was banned as a director for 12 years for his role in the £2.5 million Bishopsgate Capital Stockbrokers investment scam.

Kevin and Brett Tremain are the sons of Kenneth Noye, infamous as the fence for the 1983 Brink’s-Mat gold heist in London. Both sons use their mother’s maiden name.

The authorities have never traced most of the gold, which was worth £26 million. The actor Jack Lowden plays Noye in the BBC’s recent series about Brink’s-Mat heist - “The Gold”.

In 1986, Noye was found guilty of conspiring to handle gold from Brink’s-Mat and sentenced to 14 years. He was released in 1994. Two years later, he stabbed Stephen Cameron to death in a road rage attack. He fled the country and was arrested in 1998 in Spain. He was extradited and put on trial in 2000. Noye was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 2019.

Back in the 1980s, Noye organised smelting the Brink’s-Mat gold down and selling it to legitimate gold dealers. Having converted the gold to cash, Noye used several people to deposit the cash into high street banks in London. One bank handled transactions of more than £10 million.

A property developer, Gordon Parry, became the gang’s offshore money launderer. Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers, set up a company called Feberion Inc. This was just one of a series of front companies that Parry used to hide the money. Parry laundered £10.7 million via bank accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Jersey, and the Isle of Man.

Once laundered, the money came back to Britain where it financed property deals, including in London’s Docklands. Wensley Clarkson, who has written several books about Brink’s-Mat, told The Telegraph that,

“Canary Wharf was built on Brink’s-Mat gold. That’s a well-known fact. It’s interesting when you look at Canary Wharf now.”

Amazon Forest People Limited

In his recent article, Tom Pettifor reveals that Noye currently lives in Sevenoaks, at the head office of a company called Amazon Forest People Limited.

The company was incorporated in the UK on 6 August 2020 by Kevin Tremain. Kevin Tremain told The Mirror that his father has nothing to do with either the firm or the project in Brazil.

The ADPML in the REDD project name, is the abbreviation of Avoided Deforestation Project (Manaus) Ltd. That company was incorporated in July 2010 in the tax haven of Guernsey.

“These things are red flags,” John Christensen, director of the Tax Justice Network, told The Mirror. “There are concerns this is designed to conceal the identity of the ­beneficial owner.”

The Mirror reports that Kevin Tremain “was unable to identify the beneficial owners”.

Before The Mirror contacted Tremain, his LinkedIn page stated that he was the founder of ADPML. That has now been removed - the top image is a screenshot from 11 December 2020, and below is how it looks today:

On his LinkedIn page, Simon Marriott, Business Development Manager for ADPML, explains that,

The project has been financed completely by private capital from like-minded investors, which I have been instrumental in raising.

A 2020 corporate brochure produced by Amazon Forest People 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.

After The Mirror asked Kevin Tremain some questions about Amazon Forest People, the website disappeared.

In July 2023, Kevin Tremain incorporated a new company called Amazon Oil Ltd.

The Guernsey connection

ADPML’s registered address in Guernsey is the same address as that of Oak Group, a company that used to describe itself as “the offshore financial powerhouse”. It has offices in the Isle of Man, Jersey, Mauritius, and Luxembourg - all tax havens. The company now states that it “provides bespoke financial solutions”.

Oak Trust, which is part of Oak Group, is the administrator of the Pacajai REDD project. In the Amazon Forest People brochure, Andrew Fox, a director at Oak Management (Mauritius) Limited, was listed as the director of both Amazon Forest People and ADPML:

However, Fox told The Mirror that, “I resigned from Oak Trust in February 2021 and have ceased to have anything to do with ADPML Ltd.”

Oak Group’s address is also the same address as Carbon Green Investments Guernsey Limited. That’s the company running the Kariba REDD project in Zimbabwe, that the Swiss carbon consulting firm South Pole recently pulled out of.

Employees of Oak Directors (part of the Oak Group) signed the Deed of Representation for the issuance of carbon credits from the Kariba project:

The director of Carbon Green Investments told New Yorker journalist Heidi Blake that there was no paper trail for the money from the project after it arrived in Guernsey. He even said he would “probably go to jail” if Blake reported everything he’d told her.

Suspended and sued

The Amazon Forest People brochure states that, “When you buy a carbon certificate from us, you are supporting sustainable livelihoods and protecting our climate.”

But in September 2023, the Washington DC-based carbon certification firm, Verra, suspended the project. In a letter to the project proponents, Verra’s Farhan Ahmed wrote that,

On 01 February 2023, Verra received stakeholder comments concerning the ADPML Portel-Para REDD Project. Verra deems these comments to warrant further investigation and, as a result, is opening a new review of the project under the VCS Program.

The project cannot issue carbon credits until Verra’s review is completed.

Incidentally, Verra’s letter was addressed to Andrew Fox at ADPML - despite the fact that he’d resigned from Oak Trust (and ADPML) 32 months previously.

Pettifor travelled to Brazil to speak to people living in the project area. Ribeirinho (riverine) communities live in the area. Much of the land is public land which the ribeirinho are allowed to use.

Andréia Macedo Barreto is a lawyer at the Public Defender’s Office of Pará. She is representing the local people in a legal case against four REDD projects in Portel, including the ADPML Portel-Pará REDD project.

The companies behind the REDD projects are accused of land grabbing of public lands and the use of property documents that are not legally valid. The Public Defender’s Office is asking for compensation of more than US$4 million from the four projects for “collective moral damages”.

Pettifor writes that the project is “being sued for more than £800,000 amid ‘land grabbing’ claims”.

ADPML will contest the case, according to The Mirror.

“There’s something really wrong going on”

Pettifor spoke to Izaurino Alves who lives inside the Pacajai project area. His wooden house is a two-hour boat ride from any road.

“They came here with beautiful words, saying their interest was in preserving the forest, in keeping the trees up because it’s important for oxygen,” Izaurino told The Mirror. “They said they were going to lend us money for equipment but we never heard back from them. What am I supposed to do?”

The project has sold 10,060,355 carbon credits. Izaurino told The Mirror he has not seen any benefits from the project:

“So, today, the moment has come that people are understanding and starting to discover that this is really not right, no? So these people that were pretending to be from an NGO, doing various projects so that we could be our own people, that we would have an area to be freed up, to do our work without being bothered by anyone. But it turned out to be different, the various benefits - energy to resolve our problems, a freezer, and small finance, a basic hamper every month - none of this happened. And all these years until now, we continue the fight, battling to survive.”

The Mirror spoke to several other ribeirinhos who told a similar story.

Antonio De Pinho said, “Money is in their pockets while we are still in need of the basics. Please tell the world what is happening here.” When The Mirror asked him about who was behind the project, he said, “It’s a big mystery, a big secret.”

Antonio Valente Da Silva, a 71-year-old grandfather said, “I believe that there’s something really wrong going on.”

“The project should be cancelled”

Odivan Ferreira Corrêa is ­president of the Portel Rural Workers’ Union. In 2020, his colleagues met four representatives of ADPML, he told The Mirror. One was armed with a pistol. ADPML offered the union around £80,000 to help their work. Odivan said the union rejected the money after the representatives of ADPML refused to say who was financing the project.

“It’s us who protect the forest, we the people who live here. When this company came they talked about helping us but we haven’t seen anything happen,” Odivan told The Mirror.

“This project should be cancelled,” an ex-vice president of the union, said. “Our people should be compensated because these companies are making money out of their lands without telling them who will have the money.”

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