The unremarkable block in the affluent Kent town of Sevenoaks looks like any other new development springing up on high streets across the country.
And a grey-haired occupant seen recently, sometimes clutching a copy of The Times or a bag for life, could be mistaken for your average pensioner. But the property is home to the head office of Amazon Forest People, a company that claims to protect Brazilian jungle from deforestation.
And the resident is M25 ruthless road rage killer Kenneth Noye, 76. A shrewd crook with an eye for a deal, he was already wealthy when he got his hands on the proceeds of the
1983 £26million Brinks-Mat gold heist, Britain’s biggest ever robbery.
A Mirror investigation can reveal his sons have been involved in a project that has potentially earned around £40million, according to a report by the World Rainforest Movement charity. This figure is disputed by a source close to one of Noye’s sons.
The company behind the scheme pledges to protect Brazilian jungles, but it was suspended last month and is being sued for more than £800,000 amid “land grabbing” claims. It is not known where the money from the venture has gone or who is behind it as it is run via an offshore structure.
But Noye’s eldest son Kevin Tremain called himself the “founder” on his Linkedin profile. The 50-year-old described himself as a consultant after the Mirror put a number of questions to him. Builder Mr Tremain, of West Malling, Kent, is understood to accept he helped to set up the firm and provided his dad with a flat in the Sevenoaks property.
But he denies Noye has anything to do with the firm or project, which sells carbon credits to firms who want to make up for pollution they create. Each represents a ton of carbon that will not be released into the atmosphere because a section of the forest has been preserved.
Premier league giants Liverpool, Boeing and Samsung are among the project’s customers. Mr Tremain set up AFP as sole director in August 2020 and owns more than 75% of its shares. Yet it has only filed accounts for a “dormant” company, meaning it had not traded up to at least last year.
The address given for AFP’s HQ on its website is owned by one of his firms, Path Property Group Ltd. It is on land bought from the widow of Brink’s-Mat suspect and Noye’s pal Micky Lawson – who was cleared. Noye was known to be living there in July 2022 and again this February and September. The offshore firm behind the scheme is Avoided Deforestation Project (Manaus) Ltd.
It was formed in 2010, while Noye was serving life for murdering Stephen Cameron, 21, near the M25. ADPML is registered in tax haven Guernsey, meaning its owners are not revealed. Tax Justice Network founding director John Christensen said: “These things are red flags.
There are concerns this is designed to conceal the identity of the beneficial owner.” Mr Tremain said he was unable to identify the beneficial owners. A 2020 brochure says ADPML funded the project, which changed its brand name that year to Amazon Forest People. The firm is among six respondents being sued in Para state.
The writ accuses the project of “land grabbing”, claiming it is an “illicit practice carried out to benefit from the public forest area owned by traditional communities”. A source insisted the project has funded the building of a school and provided solar power and drinking water.
It is understood ADPML will contest the case, claiming responsibility for the project’s failings, if there are any, are not its responsibility. A source said Mr Tremain strongly condemns wrongful acts by others if proven. AFP’s website boasted it has “protected”, more than 1,562 square miles of rainforest.
But documents show the project covers 571 square miles. After we put questions to Mr Tremain, the website was unavailable. Noye’s other son Brett Tremain, 47, has been involved in marketing carbon credits. UK-based Oak Trust are the project’s administrators, with Andrew Fox named as director.
It said its “operations are subject to regulations which require the business to verify beneficial ownership of clients”. Mr Fox said: “I resigned from Oak Trust in February 2021 and have ceased to have anything to do with ADPML Ltd.” Kevin Tremain declined to comment. Neither Brett nor Noye, played by Jack Lowden in BBC drama Brink’s-Mat The Gold, responded.
How Noye laundered cash from 'Heist of the Century'
At 6.30am on 26 November 1983, six armed men entered a warehouse on the edge of Heathrow Airport. They left with 6,800 gold bars worth £26 million. It would be dubbed the Heist of the Century but the most audacious part of the crime was yet to come. The groundbreaking methods employed by the villains to keep the proceeds of the robbery changed the face of modern organised crime and policing.
Old Kent Road armed robbers “Mad” Micky McAvoy and Brian “The Colonel” Robinson teamed up with Noye and John “Goldfinger” Palmer to convert the gold into cash. Noye later told his trial that he had set up offshore companies with shares held by trusts, though he claimed the huge sums of cash invested were not from the robbery.
Gordon Parry and Michael Relton, a public school-educated solicitor “Chancellor of the Exchequer” to the robbers, were also behind the money laundering plot. Three months after the robbery, Parry flew to Jersey where he met a banker to discuss setting up a company in the UK’s Channel Islands whose beneficiaries would remain anonymous.
In February, 1984, Selective Estates (Jersey) was established. At the same time Melchester Holdings was set up in Panama City, where similar secrecy laws applied. In both cases the undisclosed beneficiaries were Relton, jailed for 12 years, and Parry, a Kent property dealer played by Sean Harris in the BBC’s The Gold, who got 10 years.
The money was then funnelled back into the UK and invested in property including in London’s Docklands, turning £7.5 million into £18 million in just over a year, and cottages belonging to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Then Met Commissioner Sir Kenneth Newman criticised banks at the time, saying they had allowed the Brink’s-Mat gang to become “robber barons”. MPs said in 2018 that they were prepared to look at ways of forcing Jersey and Guernsey to introduce public registers of company ownership. It hasn’t happened.
What are carbon credits?
Carbon credits sell customers the dream of buying their way out of the environmental crisis.
The idea is that green investments can cancel out the effects of polluting through projects like tree planting or stopping the deforestation of the Amazon. It is based on the concept that the “polluter pays” according to how much carbon they generate. This is sometimes known as carbon offsetting.
Some of the biggest companies in the world have used carbon credits as a way of trying to make up for the pollution they have created. The unregulated market was worth £1.6billion in 2021 with firms like Shell,
Disney and Gucci buying them as a way of trying to be “carbon neutral”. But there is increasing evidence suggesting that many projects exaggerate the environmental benefits.
Larry Lohmann of the Corner House campaign group said: “By allowing companies to buy offsets instead of reducing their emissions, government are allowing years of inaction before the industries in question begin to do what they have to do to deal with global warming. Worse, these credits do not always even represent verifiable reductions. They come from projects that merely claim to be saving carbon over what would have happened without the credit sales.”
Recent research into Verra, the leading certifier for carbon credits, found 90% of the rainforest credits do not represent genuine carbon reductions. Verra has questioned the methodology used and does not agree with the conclusions. They say their work since 2009 has seen billions of dollars channelled into preserving forests.
But today’s Mirror investigation shows the lack of transparency in the market, with project owners hiding their identities behind offshore companies. Meanwhile, it is often not known how much money the projects generate, where the cash has gone and how much is invested in the land and those living on it.
Noye's life of crime
May 1947 Kenneth James Noye was born in Bexleyheath, South East London. His father ran a post office and his mother managed a dog-racing track.
1976 Begins smuggling gold into the UK from Brazil and Kuwait.
1983 Claims to make £2.6m in two years from gold smuggling.
November 1983 Six gunmen burst into the Brink’s-Mat warehouse near Heathrow Airport, dousing security guards in petrol and escaping with 6,800 gold bars.
1986 Was convicted of conspiring to handle gold from the Brink’s-Mat heist and to evade VAT payments. Sentenced to 14 years and fined £500,000 with £200,000 costs.
1994 Noye is released – only to murder Stephen Cameron two years later, after which he goes on the run in Spain.
1995 Noye agrees to pay Brink’s-Mat insurers £3 million.
1998 Captured by Kent Police and later jailed for a minimum of 16 yrs.
2019 Noye released again.