The High Court has ordered two related companies into liquidation for their roles in a £3.2m land banking scam.
Berkeley Warbeck and Dentam Frost persuaded investors to hand over the money for plots of land on the basis that planning permission would be granted for development.
However, in reality, there was no likelihood of planning permission being granted as the land was located in the greenbelt or subject to restrictions on development.
Meanwhile, another connected company, Sloane Knight, has also been liquidated for marketing voluntary carbon credits for sale to the public as an investment.
It only operated for a few weeks and it is not clear how much money was raised from the public, if any.
Michael Bohdjalian, Dylan Creaven and Chris Newhouse were paid a total of just over £1m for the land banking, while there were also unexplained cash withdrawals of £181,295.
Company Investigations supervisor Chris Mayhew said: "The public needs to be on their guard against the activities of unscrupulous companies which exploit land banking and carbon credit trading as a means to induce investors to buy land or alternative investment products such as carbon credits on the promise of high returns which may never materialise.
"In this instance the land was sold for up to 31 times more than it cost in order to make those behind the companies wealthy, not investors."
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