Green Swan Holding Ltd Bond – Simon Whittley-Ryan.
In Dec 2021 we were contacted by a man who said he had information on Simon Whittley-Ryan, his attempts to hide money from creditors of his companies, and his latest attempt to deceive large investors into paying for a new bond.
The informant, who we will call “the Source”, explained that Simon Whittley-Ryan was using a front man called Andre Johan Schut to hold all the shares in the UK companies, Green Swan Holding Ltd (LINK to Companies House) and Green Swan Investments Ltd (LINK to Companies House), but the ultimate owner and controller of the companies was Simon Whittley-Ryan.
The Source claimed to have a file on the activities of Simon Whittley-Ryan and Andre Schut. It was important that Simon Whittley-Ryan remained under the radar due to his succession of business failures and the investigations being undertaken by insolvency firms. The Source said that Andre Schut was a business associate of his who owed him a lot of money. He had been waiting a long time for repayment which was due to come from the sale of the bond issued by Green Swan Holding Ltd. The Source told us that he had lost patience and had decided it was time to expose the scheme because it was dishonest. We never reveal the identity of anyone who provides us with information and we try to put scammers off the scent, but this is an unusual case because the Source chose to tell Whittley-Ryan and Andre Schut that he had been in contact with us and that he had provided us with information and documents relating to the bond. We will still not reveal his name in this article.
Here are a few of his emails to us:
“I think that my file is very interesting also due to the fact that I am aware of funds located in Swiss circumventing the UK creditors. I have also documents from banks etc. Bear in mind in the UK is Sir XXXXX [name redacted] also involved with 5M he is starting to lose without knowing. I would appreciate to have a phone call with you or your team first so that we discuss and make arrangements of delivering the files”.
SOS clarification – he is talking about Sir XXXXX who paid $5m to progress the bond and the Source is claiming that Simon Whittley-Ryan has control of a Swiss bank account which he claims contains money that should be paid to one or more of the liquidators of Simon Whittley-Ryan’s companies.
“I want to have a good understanding how you work because I don’t want people being protected. Can you assure me that people who are so called “unpleasant involved” like banks etc are not mentioned by name on the internet as well as my name? In addition I want to claim against his window director who owns me millions”.
SOS clarification – when he talks about “window director” he is referring to Andre Schut acting as the front man in the company for Simon Whittley-Ryan.
“The reputable people don’t see and know it is SWR behind it. That’s why I warned André Schut that knowing and making side letters with SWR and attracting Sir XXXXX [name redacted] as investor for the binders fee in my opinion he is not straight. But [law firm] and [settlement bank] knows SWR is involved, that is also remarkable don’t you think”? “What I have is the Cusip so you check yourself and I’m willing to evidence SWR’ role and his window dressing as well his Swiss company”. [Our bold].
Simon Whittley-Ryan has a long history of failed companies and bond defaults. Four of his fixed-interest / fixed return companies are in liquidation having been closed down by investors who have lost a lot of money. All of these companies raised money from investors, paid the interest / dividends for a short period and then defaulted. Investors in a fifth fixed-interest company owned by Simon Whittley-Ryan have been waiting years for overdue interest payments and the return of their capital.
The Source advised us that Andre Johan Schut also has a poor history relating to investments. He said that Mr Schut had lost a lot of the Source’s money in unauthorised deals which breached the terms of their investment agreement.
Green Swan Holding Ltd Bond – Simon Whittley-Ryan.
Green Swan Holding Ltd has issued a $250m bond through a settlement bank in the USA. We will respect the Source’s request that we do not name the bank. It is normal practice for a settlement bank working with a UK company to register a charge at Companies House to protect its interests.
The company directors are shown below. The official Green Swan company line is that Simon Whittley-Ryan is employed as “a consultant” to the company. Anyone who may be under investigation or who has a toxic past which would raise alarm bells will often seek to hide their ownership of a project by being described as a consultant. This enables them to get paid. We’re not sure what skills Mr Whittley-Ryan has which would be deem him worthy of being appointed as a consultant to any company.
The directors of Green Swan Holding Ltd are (at the date of publication):
ANDRE JOHAN SCHUT – Date Of Birth – May 1965;
CHARLES GRIFFITHS – Date Of Birth – May 1949;
PHILIP ROBINSON – Date Of Birth – October 1960; and
GRAHAM DAVID KERSLAKE – Date Of Birth – October 1960.
The same people are directors of Green Swan Investments Ltd. The activity of Green Swan Investments Ltd is described as “Other Credit Granting Not Elsewhere Classified”. The company is not FCA-regulated.
Graham David Kerslake’s relationship with Simon Whittley-Ryan goes back a long way. We’re not sure why Charles Griffiths and Philip Robinson agreed to be directors, but they and Graham Kerslake need to be careful that they aren’t putting themselves and their assets at risk. If this bond fails and the insurer refuses to pay out we doubt that the bond buyer(s) would simply accept the loss of $250m. The directors can expect to be asked some difficult questions about whether there was full and honest disclosure from the start and about their roles in the companies. The existence of an insurance policy is no guarantee of protection for a bondholder where Simon Whittley-Ryan is involved. We cover Simon Whittley-Ryan’s use of insurance companies as a means of providing false reassurance to investors below.
SIMON WHITTLEY-RYAN’S LIQUIDATED COMPANIES
Win River Developments Ltd (in liquidation)
What is clear from Simon Whittley-Ryan’s previous companies is that he likes to sell fixed-interest, fixed-term products such as bonds. The investors’ money is always paid to third party organisations. For example, in Win River Developments Ltd (a Whittley-Ryan company which is in liquidation) he used Alexander David Securities Ltd (“ADS”) which is a FCA-regulated company. It was being run at the time by a man called Angus Fredrick Rose.
Payment to a third party allows company funds to be disbursed to other third parties and to bank accounts owned by a company director without those transfers showing up in the accounts of Win River Development Ltd. This provides a way for a company director to unjustly enrich himself and others.
WRD was wound up by the High Court in January 2020. The liquidator of the company is entitled to receive all the company records and full disclosure from company directors, officers and any third party which holds records relating to the company. The WRD liquidator requested records from Simon Whittley-Ryan, Alexander David Securities Ltd and an unnamed individual who we believe to be Angus Fredrick Rose because he was the director of ADS at the time. The liquidator has advised creditors that all three parties have failed to fully co-operate.
WRD has now been in liquidation for 2 ½ years and the liquidator still hasn’t received all the company records. This is typical Simon Whittley-Ryan behaviour which he has replicated in his other liquidated companies. Failure to disclose records is generally an indicator that there have been dishonest transactions that they do not want investigated. Honest parties with honest business transactions would have no reason not to hand over company records to a liquidator.
We have been advised by a creditor of the company that the liquidator of WRD updated all creditors in late May. The information shared by the liquidator was:
- That the company director (Simon Whittley-Ryan) and Alexander David Securities Ltd and an unnamed individual (which we believe to be Angus Fredrick Rose) refused to co-operate and have not provided all the information requested of them.
- As a result, the liquidator served legal paperwork on all three in early 2022 advising them of legal action to obtain a Court Order compelling them to provide the information. The most important documents relate to failure to provide bank statements so that investor monies can be traced. Failure to comply with a Court Order is regarded as Contempt Of Court and is a criminal offence.
- The hearing for the court application is this week on 29th June 2022. The first hearing in April was adjourned at the request of one of the defendants.
- Creditors have been approached by Simon Whittley-Ryan to support his plan to remove the existing liquidator and appoint a liquidator chosen by Mr Whittley-Ryan. This is being seen as an attempt to frustrate the legal process and install a liquidator who would be sympathetic towards Simon Whittley-Ryan. He failed to gain support for this proposal.
- Simon Whittley-Ryan has made multiple promises to repay creditors ever since the company was put into liquidation 2 ½ years ago.
Regarding point 5, this is a standard tactic used by Simon Whittley-Ryan in order to delay creditors from taking action against him. Investors in another of his companies, Highgrove Osprey PLC, received the same promises for 6 years until one of them realised he was never going to pay them and wound up the company. Investors need to be aware of the Limitations Act in respect of starting legal actions against a wrongdoer. This LINK to Wikipedia gives a good overview. As a general guide, victims have 6 years from the date of the investment to start a legal action. There are some circumstances where this time limit can be extended, but victims need to be wary of false promises of repayment which go on for a long time.
This is not the only problem facing Alexander David Securities Ltd. In late April 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority issued a statement about Alexander David Securities Ltd and the action the FCA had taken in relation to another element of its business. It’s no wonder that ADS is trying to hide its transactions with Simon Whittley-Ryan because that might well provide the FCA with another reason to look at them. Here is a LINK to the FCA announcement.
A liquidator has the power to demand the repayment of any money which it feels belongs to the company and has been unjustly paid out to directors and third parties. We believe the WRD records are likely to show unjust payments to Simon Whittley-Ryan and/or his other companies and/or his accomplices, hence the reason why the three parties have been reluctant to hand over their records to the liquidator.
Highgrove Osprey PLC
This company was wound up in September 2019. Since that time Simon Whittley-Ryan has also failed to co-operate with the liquidator and has not paid back funds he “loaned” from the company to himself. According to page 6 of the liquidator’s report from November 2021 (copied below) Simon Whittley-Ryan owes at least £100,377 to the company. The liquidator states “My investigations into the other assets listed above…..have been hampered by a lack of cooperation from Simon Whittley-Ryan”. That statement was issued more than 3 years after the company was wound up which shows how Simon Whittley-Ryan always seeks to prevent any investigation into his failed companies. Here is a LINK to Companies House which contains the full report.
Here is a LINK to Page 6 which doesn’t paint Simon Whittley-Ryan in a very good light at all. Page 6 of the Liquidator Report
Hawksbill Property Consultants Ltd (in liquidation)
This company was wound up in February 2020 by HM Revenue & Customs. The matter is being handled by the Official Receiver in London and to date the Official Receiver has not filed any reports.
St Helier Capital Management Ltd (in liquidation)
This company was wound up by a creditor in December 2020. Page 9 of the liquidator’s report filed at Companies House in May 2022 states that “limited books and records have been delivered up and therefore our investigations remain very much underway but have been restricted due to the limited information held”. Yet again Simon Whittley-Ryan is frustrating investigations into another of his failed companies.
During the winding up process Simon Whittley-Ryan lied to the court about having paid some investors when their capital was due to be returned. We knew those investors and were able to contact them to ask if they had been repaid. They all said that they had not received any money. We know Simon Whittley-Ryan is an accomplished liar and knows how to frustrate legal processes, but we did not think he would submit a written Witness Statement to court in which he blatantly lied. We have written about the St Helier Capital Management petition in a series of articles. You can read one of them here via this LINK.
SUMMARY OF LIQUIDATED COMPANIES
There is a consistent theme which runs through Simon Whittley-Ryan’s liquidated companies and it is that he and his associates seek to frustrate insolvency practitioners whenever they try to trace company money and assets. Normally when a company director fails to co-operate with the liquidator the Insolvency Service will commence proceedings to have that person disqualified from acting as a director. The proceedings are not made public until they have concluded so we do not know if Simon Whittley-Ryan is currently subject to any director disqualification proceedings, but it would be surprising if he was not.
OTHER SIMON WHITTLEY-RYAN SCAM COMPANIES WHICH HAVE NOT BEEN LIQUIDATED
There are several but we will only report on two because they are important. The first is CAMBRIDGE MEDICAL SCREENING LTD – LINK to Companies House which was an outright scam from the very start. It was Simon Whittley-Ryan’s attempt to defraud investors by claiming to operate a specialist coronavirus research company at the height of the pandemic. We wrote a full report on this in September 2020 which can be viewed on this LINK to our article. We have an update on that article. We were recently contacted by Professor G.K. Mahadev who Simon Whittley-Ryan claimed headed up the research and testing division of the company. Professor Mahadev has advised that this was never the case and that he was not involved with the company. We accept his version as true because Simon Whittley-Ryan has made many false claims across all his companies in his ongoing attempts to defraud investors. We hope Professor Mahadev takes action against Simon Whittley-Ryan. Cambridge Medical Screening Ltd was dissolved in December 2021.
The second company is NATURAL CAPITAL ENERGY LTD. This Whittley-Ryan company was trying to launch a $200m Green Bond which was very similar to the Green Swan Holding Bond in terms of the claimed project portfolio. It was not well received and failed to attract investment. Graham Kerslake’s project LORDS MEADOW ENERGY was one of those in the Natural Capital Energy Ltd portfolio and it is also in the Green Swan Holding Ltd Bond portfolio.
The Natural Capital Energy Bond Term Sheet is copied below. This bond was allegedly going to be managed by Petra Asset Management Ltd, a FCA-regulated company which has this website – LINK.
We contacted them in November 2020 to ask about their role in this investment product. They did not respond. We used their contact email address of [email protected] and we followed up a few weeks later. Still no response. We were intrigued by the claim that the bond was asset-backed using “precious gemstones” held in a vault in California. We have no doubt this gemstone security would have provided the same level of protection as the insurances arranged by Simon Whittley-Ryan in some of his other companies (see below) i.e it would have been worthless and afforded no protection whatsoever.
Natural Capital Term Sheet – LINK to PDF file
HOW DOES SIMON WHITTLEY-RYAN EXTRACT THE MONEY FROM HIS INVESTMENT COMPANIES ?
His normal tactic is for each of his investment companies to invest the money in other companies owned by him. This enables him to empty the investment company of its money and, when the investment company goes into liquidation, which is the normal outcome, it prevents investors from being able to find out exactly how their money was spent. The transfer of money from his investment companies to other companies he controls acts as a barrier to creditors, preventing them from following the money trail. The consistent outcome is that all the companies end up with nothing – no cash and no assets. This has been our concern about the Green Swan Holding Bond ever since the Source told us that Simon Whittley-Ryan controlled the Green Swan companies. If he follows his usual pattern we’re concerned he will install front men in each of the project companies which will allow him to siphon off the bond money.
INSURANCES ARRANGED BY SIMON WHITTLEY-RYAN
We know of at least two companies owned by Simon Whittley-Ryan which sought to reassure investors that their investment funds were secure because he claimed the companies had strong and cast-iron insurance policies in place to protect the investors’ money in the event of a default. Those two companies were Win River Developments Ltd (in liquidation) mentioned above, and Win River Ltd which is not in liquidation, but which defaulted on bond interest and capital repayments to investors a long time ago. Win River Ltd has not filed accounts for three years and has been prevented from being dissolved by Companies House. Investors who have sought to make claims under the insurance policies in both companies have been advised that the insurance is invalid and will not pay out. At a recent meeting between investors in Win River Ltd and the insurer the following summary was given:
The Insurance Company has confirmed to our lawyers that it has avoided (or rescinded) the Win River Ltd policy on the basis that the company made deliberate and/or reckless material non-disclosures and/or misrepresentations to the Insurance Company when the WRL policy was negotiated and agreed. These related to Mr Simon Whittley-Ryan’s background and involvement in previous investment schemes.
So the insurance policies have proven to be worthless. A report has been submitted to the Financial Conduct Authority requesting that they look into the circumstances of this case.
THE GREEN SWAN HOLDING LTD BOND WEBSITE
This is a simple paragraph because there isn’t a website, but there was until recently. It was to be found on the domain of www.greenswaninvestments.com . We contacted Green Swan via the Contact Page on the website to ask about the role of Simon Whittley-Ryan. Remember, according to them Mr Whittley-Ryan was only “a consultant”. He has been telling all the creditors of his companies that he is going to “refinance” the liquidated companies and pay everyone back. His promises would have required him to pay back millions of pounds so we wanted to know how money paid into Green Swan Holding Ltd would find its way to him.
A few hours after hitting the “SEND” button on the Contact Page, the Green Swan website disappeared and has not been seen since. Obviously they didn’t like being asked questions about the role of Simon Whittley-Ryan, but it suggests to us that he controlled the website. It’s not a problem that the website has gone because we had already printed off every page. Website About Green Swan – LINK. It provides an interesting glimpse of the backgrounds of three of the company directors of the Green Swan companies. It doesn’t mention Andre Schut’s financial issues with the Source.
Here is the ‘PARTNERS’ PAGE Website Partners Green Swan – LINK Maybe they are, or were, partners of Green Swan Holding Ltd and/or Green Swan Investments Ltd, or maybe it was a complete fabrication.
GREEN SWAN HOLDING LTD BOND – SIMON WHITTLEY-RYAN AND THE GREEN SWAN BOND INSURANCE
Obviously, there is a difference between insurance which should cover a few million pounds and insurance which covers $250m. You would certainly think so, but the Green Swan bond insurance saga has had a tortuous path. That’s another story, but suffice to say they’ve found it very difficult to find an insurer. The principle of insurance is always the same. The insured party must provide full disclosure and transparency otherwise the insurer will have a potential cause to invalidate the policy in the future. The reality is that insurance companies have no problem dealing with people like Simon Whittley-Ryan. The insurance company will receive a large insurance payment at the start and, assuming that there hasn’t been full disclosure, there’s a very strong possibility that they can avoid ever having to pay out in the event of a default. The only people affected by this are the bond buyers who are relying on the insurance to protect their investments. They are the losers. The insurance company and the people who make “deliberate and/or reckless material non-disclosures and/or misrepresentations…….” as Simon Whittley-Ryan has done on at least two separate occasions, are the winners because they’ve got the investment money they were after.
Looking back through the numerous emails sent out by Whittley-Ryan we can see that he was having trouble finding someone to pay “the binders fee” for the insurance. That fee was $5m and it acts as the first insurance payment. It is really a sign of commitment to encourage the insurance company to spend time working on the policy. We won’t go into the insurance companies which declined to insure the bond, but when the Source contacted us he told us that the binder fee had been paid. That ties up with emails sent by Whittley-Ryan. The Source advised us that the funder was a well-known, recently knighted man with connections at the very highest level of UK Government. He expressed surprise that someone so highly connected had been persuaded to support this bond. We will not name the man because we cannot prove that he was, or is, involved. That is something we will leave to more experienced financial journalists. That insurance company withdrew and we do not know if the binders fee was refunded or rolled over to another insurance company. The Source advised us that the binders fee funder had stayed involved and was trying to find another insurance company, but we have no evidence supporting his statement.
It was at this time that the Source started to back-track on his original position. He began to claim that both Andre Schut and Simon Whittley-Ryan were going to receive commission payments only from the sale of the bond. We suspected that a deal had been done to repay some of Andre Schut’s debt to the Source. In April this year Andre Schut transferred his 100% ownership of the shares to a Swiss firm, Delta Mountain AG (90%) and Graham Kerslake (10%). It was widely known that Graham Kerslake had been touting his LORDS MEADOW ENERGY project around looking for anybody who would finance it because the planning permission deadline was fast approaching. We assume the 10% shareholding was to persuade him not to give up on Green Swan.
THE SETTLEMENT BANK AND SIMON WHITTLEY-RYAN
In February 2022 we wrote to Andre Schut. We received a short reply which didn’t answer any of our questions. We were surprised that he made no effort to refute the points we made against Green Swan Holding Ltd. The email and response is copied below:
SOS EMAIL
Dear Mr Schut,
You will be aware that we were contacted in December regarding the Green Swan Holding Ltd bond.
We are writing to you to get answers to some important questions. Our clients would like all parties involved in the Green Swan bond e.g banks, brokers, the SEC, FCA etc to be informed of their concerns. Your answers to our questions might allay those concerns and encourage our clients to reconsider.
We have clients who have lost money in Simon Whittley-Ryan’s (“SWR”) series of fixed term investments. Five companies in total. They are:
- Highgrove Osprey PLC;
- Hawksbill Property Consultants Ltd;
- St Helier Capital Management Ltd;
- Win River Developments Ltd;
- Win River Ltd.
Companies 1-4 were forced into liquidation by creditors after the companies defaulted on their contractual liabilities. These defaults go back to 2014 in some cases. Company 5 also defaulted on the fixed payments and on the capital repayments some years ago. SWR has obstructed the insolvency practitioners in the liquidated companies by failing to co-operate. Company assets have gone missing. SWR and his friendly escrow company and the escrow company director are respondents in court proceedings in April filed by one of the insolvency firms. You can easily check out these companies for yourself by contacting the insolvency practitioners and reading their reports filed at Companies House.
SWR’s preferred strategy over the years has been to incorporate new companies and sell new fixed-term investments, rather than to raise additional funding for his existing companies which have defaulted on payments. In each new company he pays himself commission from funds raised, which would not be acceptable practice for a company director and would show up in the companies’ accounts. Hence the reason he uses new companies because he can have the investment funds paid to a friendly escrow company which then makes disbursements to him. It is believed by some creditors that he was running a Ponzi Scheme, using money raised by new companies to sustain fixed interest payments to investors in his other companies until this scam strategy was exposed. The belief is that this is why he obstructs investigations into each of the companies’ affairs.
We were initially told that you were acting as a front man for SWR in Green Swan, but that was later retracted. Our clients and us believe that you are acting as a front man and are holding shares on behalf of SWR which you have not declared. Can you confirm whether you are holding shares in Green Swan Holding Ltd for SWR or any other party, and if so, in what percentages ?
SWR’s normal MO is to ensure that he holds more than 51% of shares in the top company and shares in each SPV which subsequently receives funds from the top company. That is how he ensures he always profits from the top company’s money. He also takes commission which is sometimes direct from the top company (as with Green Swan) and sometimes via an escrow collection agent so that the top company’s accounts only show the net amount it received and his commission remains hidden.
Can you also answer the following:
- In January we used the Contact Form on the Green Swan Investments website to contact the company. We asked whether there had been full transparency on the bond ownership and in the Information Memorandum. The next day the website was taken down. We have copies of each page and can provide them if necessary. According to filings at Companies House you own 100% of both Green Swan companies so was it you that removed the website and if so, for what reason ? Our question on whether there has been full transparency still remains unanswered
- Have you declared the true beneficial owner(s) of the company to the parties involved and in the promotional material ? Have you entered into any side agreements which have not been declared to the parties involved with the bond ?
- You claim that SWR is a consultant to your company. Why does he use different versions of his name on different email addresses e.g Simon Ryan and Simon Whittley ? For Green Swan Investments (your company) he uses the name ‘Simon Ryan’, but you know that is not his real name. He has never been called Simon Ryan. His birth name is Simon Whittley and he married a ‘Ryan’, thus changing his name to Simon Whittley-Ryan.
- Do you own the projects that you claim to own ? You will note from the attached document that Natural Capital Energy Ltd claimed they owned the projects, but a former director has advised us that was never the case. He claims this document was produced by SWR, and the Natural Capital Energy directors chose not to support it and resigned. We were also told that the UK authorities have an ongoing investigation into the company, but we were not told why.
- Have you described SWR as a consultant so that he can draw commission because he would appear, on paper, to be independent of Green Swan ? We have been advised by a former director of Natural Capital Energy that investment into that company was unachievable because SWR insisted that £8m of funds raised should be paid to him in commissions, despite him being the 100% shareholder of the company. No potential investor was prepared to agree to that. Was the subsequent Green Swan product refined to ensure that SWR doesn’t appear as a director or shareholder ?
- In the past, SWR has arranged insurance policies to allegedly protect investors’ capital. When the investment has collapsed the insurer has declined to pay out citing undeclared material facts about which it should have been informed when the insurance application was made. Are you satisfied that you are declaring all material facts to insurers and that there would be no risk of any insurer declining to pay out in the event of a claim ? Do you feel that you should advise the parties involved in the bond about the trading history of your “consultant” ?
We would very much like this to be a genuine investment because SWR has been promising to repay creditors for a very long time, but we believe there is some doubt around the level of disclosure which you would be able to clear up very easily by answering the questions..
We have not copied this to all known bond participants yet because we want to give you an opportunity to clarify these points in writing so that we and our clients can be satisfied everything is above-board.
We have copied in Mr Kerslake because he knows exactly what went on in Natural Capital Energy and is obviously close to the centre of Green Swan too. If there is any hint of dishonesty we will have to report this matter to the SEC and FCA.
It will be the Green Swan company directors who will be held to account for any deception. We doubt the companies involved in the bond who may have incurred significant costs would be willing to let that go. We would expect them to take action against the Green Swan directors to recover their costs.
If you genuinely own 100% of the shares without any encumbrances or side agreements you would not be restricted from entering into any agreement with other parties. Have you considered restructuring the bond with more credible parties than SWR and providing security for SWR creditors ? SWR could not complain because he has been promising to repay all creditors for years.
Please come back to us by the end of the week because our clients are expecting answers to these questions..
ANDRE SCHUT’S REPLY
Dear Sir
We refer to your email dated 16 February 2022 timed at 13.16.
We would refer you to Companies House in respect of any information you seek on Green Swan Holding Limited.
We have no further comment on the matters you raise and will not be entering into any further correspondence with you.
Yours sincerely
André Schut
Director
Green Swan Investments Ltd.
71-75 Shelton Street
Greater London, WC2H 9QQ
United Kingdom
As we did not receive answers to our questions we wrote to Lance Bondy and Shazia Flores at the Settlement Bank sending them a copy of our email and Mr Schut’s reply. These were the officials who were dealing with Simon Whittley-Ryan although they might not have realised it was him. Our email is below:
Dear Sirs,
Please see below an email we sent to Andre Schut, a director and 100% shareholder of Green Swan Holding Ltd (according to records filed at Companies House in the UK). You will note his reply to our email which did not address any of our clients’ concerns. Perhaps you may have more luck than us in obtaining answers to the questions we put to him.
Simon Whittley-Ryan specialises in incorporating fixed return investments, defaulting on the payments and then obstructing insolvency firms when they seek to investigate where the money and purported assets have gone. He has recently taken to using the name Simon Ryan to avoid drawing attention to his failed business history.
We are hoping that by forwarding the emails it will enable you to undertake due diligence to satisfy yourselves you have had full transparency in your communications and that the bond buyer’s funds will be fully protected by the insurer.
If you are satisfied, please let us know so we can reassure our clients that the repayments promised by Simon Whittley-Ryan will originate from funds raised by legitimate means and will not be subject to clawback at any time in the future.
We did not receive a response to the email. What we found concerning was that the Source had provided us with a number of emails between Simon Whittley-Ryan and the settlement bank. We’re not sure whether the bank was actually aware that they were dealing with Simon Whittley-Ryan. The email addresses he was using were not in the name of Simon Whittley-Ryan. He used three separate email addresses when communicating with the bank, none of which were in the name of Simon Whittley-Ryan.
1. In his Green Swan email address he calls himself Simon Ryan. Andre Schut was copied into these emails and he knows that Simon Ryan is not his real name. He never said a word.
2. He also used a petra-am.co.uk email address in which he again calls himself Simon Ryan. We wonder whether the petra-am.co.uk domain name was being used as a deception to suggest to recipients that he was somehow part of FCA-regulated firm Petra Asset Management Ltd. This domain does not link to their website so we wonder who owns it and why We think it is likely that Simon Whittley-Ryan owns that domain name. We don’t know if anyone at the bank sought to question this.
3. He also used a Natural Capital email address in which he calls himself Simon Whittley.
We’ve seen emails to the bank officers where he has used one email address to write to them and copied it to the other two email addresses. Didn’t anyone think to ask him to explain ?
If anyone is tempted to buy into the Green Swan Holding Ltd Bond we suggest they take additional steps to protect themselves. They would be wise not to rely on the insurance policy because, as we have shown, an insurance policy is no use if it can be invalidated due to deceit and failure to disclose. They might want to consider obtaining personal guarantees from all the Green Swan directors, the settlement bank, the Swiss escrow company, Sir XXXXX and other involved parties. They might also want to consider what restrictions they can impose to prevent money paid to the projects ending up in Simon Whittley-Ryan’s pocket.
Green Swan Holding Ltd Bond – Simon Whittley-Ryan.
Here is a document sent to us by the Source which evidenced the bond at the time. Bond Cusip Numbers
This article was sent to Andre Schut and the Source prior to publication to ask if they would like any amendments or corrections. Andre Schut did not reply. The Source did reply to tell us that Andre Schut had now agreed to put money by for our clients from the bond sale which would be held by our solicitor. However, he said that Andre Schut would have to ask Simon Whittley-Ryan for his permission to do that ! This had been suggested months ago and we knew it was just them stalling for time. The Source was also disappointed that we intended to publish some of his emails. We explained that nobody outside of the Green Swan circle would know who he was and he had already told them so the emails needed to be published because they showed the level of deception.
What’s Next ? Well, the Source said that Simon Whittley-Ryan has another bond coming out. It is a hotel bond and this time he is intending to raise $500m ! The insurance company must love Simon Whittley-Ryan.
UPDATE 1 – July 2022: A few days after publication of this article Alexander David Securities placed itself into liquidation. Here is our article on that – LINK. The court hearing brought by the liquidator of Win River Developments Ltd was adjourned until September at Mr Whittley-Ryan’s request.
UPDATE 2 – August 2022: A lot of changes have been taking place in the Green Swan companies. The bank which was supposed to be holding assets as ‘security’ to protect the buyer of the bond has withdrawn and been replaced by SA Guarantee Specialists, a cell company based in South Africa. The Green Swan Holding Ltd bond has cut its fundraising aspirations in half and it is now a $125m bond. Green Swan Holding Ltd has now filed its annual accounts which show assets of £3.72m and creditors of £3.87m. Normally the accounts would be signed off by one of the company directors, but in this case all four directors have signed. That’s unusual.
UPDATE 3 – August 2022. We have written an updated article on the directors of Green Swan Holding Ltd and the involvement of Andre Schut and Simon Whittley Ryan in promoting Trading Platform Investment Scams (“TPIS”) which the FBI has described as fraudulent schemes. The article can be viewed on this LINK.
Green Swan Holding Bond – Simon Whittley-Ryan.
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