Wales Being Bought Up Acre By Acre

On 15/02/202515/02/2025 By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Farming, Globalism, Greens, Wind Turbines71 Comments

This piece was prompted by someone asking me if I’d read an article recently published on the Nation.Cymru website. I smiled to myself, and responded in the negative.

But I went to the site anyway, and read ‘140 hectares of Welsh land purchased to restore woodland and nature habitat‘. Then one thing led to another, and here we are with yet another ‘quickie’.

Which means I must apologise again for the delay in the promised piece on the Rhug Estate. I have started, and it’s in the pipeline.

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CONNECTIONS

You may recall that earlier this month I wrote about 200m tall wind turbines being threatened for a hill to the east of Neath, in the Afan valley. That opus was called, Do They Know Where The Money’s Coming From? Do They Care?

(The answer to both questions is almost certainly No.)

The area under threat is Mynydd Fforch-dwm. The piece in Nation.Cymru a few days back concerned Brynau (pinned) and Cefn Morfudd. Fforch-dwm is to the east.

Back to the article, which was unattributed, suggesting it was a press release, and that N.T, funded by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’, has truly joined the Welsh media.

The article told us that Coed Cadw, the Welsh branch of the Woodland Trust, had “secured” 140 hectares at Cefn Morfudd to add to the 95 hectares previously acquired at Brynau farm.

Let’s look into it a little more. And as ever, the real question is, where’s the money coming from?

The purchase . . . supported by grants from Lloyds Bank and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, funding from People’s Postcode Lottery . . . donations . . . Moondance Foundation and the Banister Charitable Trust . . . grant from The Woodland Investment Grant (TWIG) scheme, a partnership between The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Welsh Government

Most look to be straightforward grants, but two piqued my interest.

The Moondance Foundation, is the charitable arm of the Admiral Insurance group. The company formed by American Henry Engelhardt, and Wales’ only FTSE 100 company.

But who now owns the group? Wikipedia says:

Admiral Group plc is owned by . . . shareholders, including the Moondance Foundation, Rothschild & Co, Fidelity Management & Research, and FIL Investment Advisors

Wikipedia also tells us:

In April 2021, Admiral finalised the sale of interests, that included its Cardiff-based price comparison firm Confused.com, to RVU for proceeds of £508m.

This is a reference to RVU, which in recent years seems to have bought up a number of well-known insurance companies. The RVU website gives us the timeline, and we see Confused.com under 2021.

The first entry mentions Silver Lake as a ‘US equity firm’. Silver Lake (Offshore) AIV GP V Ltd is the ultimate owner of RVU, and it’s registered in the Cayman Islands.

How often do we end up in the Caymans – or other sun-blest locales – when looking into planet savers?

The money for Coed Cadw at Bryn Morfudd may be coming from the Moondance Foundation, or the Moondance Foundation might simply be acting as a conduit. For having just mentioned so many hard-nosed investors, and tax haven companies, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were looking at another bit of greenwashing.

The other name that caught my attention was the Banister Charitable Trust. But I couldn’t find a website, only references like this. It’s based in Bristol, the source of so much ‘green-ism’.

There is of course an entry on the Charity Commission website, which set me off down a few more rabbit-holes. Especially when I checked out the trustees.

Where we see two surnamed Banister, but above them, Ludlow Trust Company, which seems to manage other trusts. So what is the Ludlow Trust?

Let’s start with the website. Where we read:

Established in 2020 to acquire and manage the UK trust business of Coutts and the NatWest Group . . .

In 2024, Ludlow Trust also acquired the UK trust business of C. Hoare & Co.

So it’s a very recent creation, and it would appear to be in the business of saving people money, by way of avoiding taxes wherever possible, or investing in those areas offering reductions in tax, and other benefits.

The Companies House entry is also interesting. Looking through the recent grants I found a number of recipients based in Wales. (I include the Woodland Trust because there’s unlikely to be a separate payment to Coed Cadw.)

Tracking the ultimate ownership and control of the Banister Charitable Trust led me to Luxembourg, the EU’s internal tax haven. To be exact, 2 Rue des Gaulois and the Charter Trust Group.

It then comes back to London, and there’s an Isle of Man connection. But the point, I think, with both Moondance and Banister, is that the money offered may be rather more than no-strings-attached grants.

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THE BIT IN THE MIDDLE

To recap: In a recent post we looked at the 200m turbines planned for Mynydd Fforch-dwm, and now we’ve looked at Woodland Trust expanding its little empire at Brynau and Cefn Morfudd.

But if we look again at the map, we see there’s a bit in between, Mynydd Blaenafon, so who owns this?

To find out I obviously went to the Land Registry website. Here’s the title document I downloaded. You’ll see the land was bought in September 2020, for £525,000, by Peter Jeffrey Solly, of Exeter in Devon, who has a chequered record.

Solly’s also in the business of saving the planet . . . or of making money from pretending to do so. For the ‘Natural capital’ he mentions is the scam of scams. Described by the European Investment Bank thus:

Natural capital is the value of everything that comes from nature — soil, air, water and all living creatures

This is the Greensters dream – get politicians to introduce subsidies, grants and tax breaks for just about anything. Buy a field and claim it’s capturing carbon, breeding worms, or providing a habitat for moles – then wait for the lucre to roll in.

And when things start growing in your field . . . well, you’ll be able to order your private jet to get to the January knees-ups in Davos.

And you can even demand payment for the air above your field.

This explains why assorted corporations, asset managers, hedge funds, tax avoidance specialists, investors, etc., are buying up just about every parcel of land they can.

Though in the case of Solly his ambitions tread an already well-worn path. Because if we look more closely at the title document we see, at the very end:

He has a lease agreement with a company called Mynydd Fforch Dwm Wind Energy 2021 Ltd. This is a front for Naturalis, which we read about in the earlier piece. So I won’t go over the links again.

What I find intriguing though is the timing. Solly bought the land at Mynydd Blaenafon in September 2020. The Naturalis website for Mynydd Fforch Dwm Wind Farm is also dated 2020.

Is Solly working with, or for, the company behind the plan for Mynydd Fforch-dwm? Was he tipped off? Then again, is Mynydd Fforch-dwm a red herring, and are the turbines really planned for Mynydd Blaenafon?

Or are turbines planned on both mountains? God knows there are enough in the area already. Maybe somebody’s hoping a couple of dozen more won’t be noticed.

I’m not sure what exactly’s happening, but it begins to look a little complicated, maybe even devious. So here’s a thought . . .

According to the Land Registry, Mynydd Fforch-dwm is still in Welsh ownership. The owner has entered into an agreement with Mynydd Fforch Dwm Wind Energy 2021 Ltd.

While next door, the land at Mynydd Blaenafon was sold outright to Peter Jeffrey Solly. So was the previous owner, the Welsh owner, unaware of the turbine plans?

Worth asking, because everywhere we look in modern Wales we see Welsh people losing out, being displaced. We own less of Wales now than at any time in our history. Certainly less than we did before devolution.

That’s what 26 years of socialist rule under Labour and Plaid Cymru has achieved.

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CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In our former mining valleys today it seems as if all land outside towns and villages is to be given over to wind farms. All of them foreign owned, with vast profits flooding out of Wales every day.

But why be surprised – this is Globalism. The land is bought up, cleared, exploited, and people are confined to 15-minute settlements, with travelling discouraged.

Superficially, and from a Welsh perspective, it may look bleak. But with President Trump declaring the ‘climate emergency’ to be a scam, and J D Vance humiliating the Globalist puppets running Europe, our enemy’s agenda is under real threat.

Starmer has a massive majority in MPs, but little popular support (less credibility). The EU is tottering. Germany goes to the polls on the 23rd. The war in Ukraine will soon end, and there’ll be huge revelations that not even the BBC will be able to ignore.

Thinking more locally – Labour will lose the 2026 Senedd elections. And many or most of the council by-elections between now and then.

So hang on in there. Better times are a-coming!

♦ end ♦

Buy me a coffee

Do They Know Where The Money’s Coming From? Do They Care?

On 03/02/202503/02/2025 By JacIn Business and Commerce, Climate, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Environmentalism, Globalism, Greens, Wind Turbines, World Economic Forum13 Comments

This ‘quickie’ is in response to a news item about 200m tall wind turbines planned for Mynydd Fforch-dwm, near the village of Tonmawr, east of Neath. Permission has been granted by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ on the grounds that it’s a Development of National Significance.

The bulk of this post will be taken up with a look into the labyrinthine ownership of the company said to be behind this project, and others, before concluding with more general thoughts on ‘renewables’ in Wales.

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THE PROJECT

First, let’s give you an idea of the where we’re at. As I’ve said, it’s to the east of Neath, and in the map below I’ve circled Mynydd Fforch-dwm in red.

The additional run-off of rainwater generated by the huge concrete turbine foundations, the cable trenches, the access roads and all the other work, will run into Nant Pelenna, which joins the Afan near Pontrhydyfen, and then flows on down to Port Talbot.

It’s an area already cursed by many turbines, with even more planned. Such as the proposal to erect even taller turbines just a few miles away at Y Bryn.

Though it’s not just the six huge wind turbines that are being promised, for this ‘energy park’ will bring even more goodies:

As well as the six large turbines . . . the site could also contain up to 10 hectares of solar photovoltaic panels mounted on frames fixed to the ground along with associated infrastructure such as battery storage facilities, electricity transformers, and access works.

The company named in the article as being behind the project is Naturalis Energy. Here’s their elementary website. Naturalis describes itself as a joint venture between Renantis and REG Windpower Ltd.

Companies House shows a Naturalis Energy Ltd based in Telford, Shropshire. But I’m taking a punt on the company we’re looking for being Naturalis Energy Developments Ltd, formed 23 September, 2019, as the timing fits with the website dated 2020.

Also, because control is exercised by Renantis UK Ltd. Running Renantis are two Americans and a Brit. This is one of the Americans, and this is the other. And here’s the Brit, Michael Nagle.

The same trio controls Vector Renewables UK Ltd at the same London address as Naturalis Energy Developments. Vector is owned by an outfit in the Caymans.

These three may control other companies, but they can’t be traced in a Companies House search because they aren’t listed as directors, only as ‘Persons with significant control’.

From what I can see, the expertise in ‘renewables’ for Mynydd Fforch-dwm will be supplied by REG, with the money coming from Naturalis-Renantis. So I’m going to concentrate on the second element, the funding.

But before leaving REG . . . It was a tortuous trail but I eventually established that it’s all owned by Andrew Nicholas Whalley. Who’s been involved with many companies. Quite a few with Welsh names.

Back to Renantis UK Ltd, and the latest accounts filed with Companies House (to Dec 31, 2023) which tell us who owns this company. And whaddya know! – we’re back to the Cayman Islands, and the wording is the same as we just read for Vector.

Now it gets a little complicated, so let’s hope I can explain it.

The panels above tell us Renantis UK is a subsidiary of ‘Renantis S.p.A’, registered in Milan, and elsewhere we learn that until November 2022 Renantis was known as Falck Renewables, following an acquisition in February that year by ‘institutional investors, of which J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc. is adviser‘.

Which started to make sense, and ring bells. For Falck’s been mentioned on this blog before. Back in February 2022 in ‘Bute Energy Selling Wales For Danegeld?

To explain . . . Learning of the link-up between Scottish company Parabola Bute Energy (planning some 20 ‘renewables’ projects in Wales) and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, I went to the CIP website looking for a reference to Parabola Bute.

I couldn’t find one, but I told readers back then what I did find.

‘Copenhagen Infrastructure 1 has invested GBP ~155m of equity for a 49% stake in Falck Renewables S.p.A.’s (Falck) operational onshore wind portfolio in Scotland and Wales.’

That was written in February 2022, the month Falck was taken over by the ‘investors’ advised by JP Morgan Chase. Whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, wants to compulsorily purchase land and property – to accommodate the wind turbines and the solar panels needed to save the planet!

Wind farms and solar arrays that – by pure chance! – will be owned by companies, hedge funds, corporations, and other entities run by men like Jamie Dimon.

If this dangerous nonsense had come from the studded tongue of a green-haired newt-botherer, or even a TV envirogrifter, I might laugh it off. But as the headline reminds us, Dimon is a ‘Wall Street titan’.

When I first read that I thought it was the most frightening – yet revealing – example of the Globalist corporate mentality I had ever read. And I still think that.

Maybe I should explain at this point that Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners acts as an intermediary, finding environmentally acceptable investments for investors.

CIP manages 12 funds and has to date raised approximately EUR 30 billion for investments in energy and associated infrastructure from more than 180 international institutional investors.

Getting back to Falck . . . I’d come across the company even before the CIP connection. For Falck owns (owned?) 20-year-old, 39-turbine Cefn Croes Wind Farm, above the A44. In its day, said to be the biggest (by output) in the UK.

Let’s go back to the complicated ownership details on the Renantis UK accounts. Where we read: ‘The ultimate parent company and controlling party at 31 December 2023 is IIF Int’l Holding LP, a company Incorporated in Cayman Islands‘.

A bit more searching told me that ‘IIF’ stands for International Investment Fund, which makes sense. An entity that was handling $24 billion two years ago. But it seems not everybody’s happy.

This article from US consumer advocacy organisation Public Citizen wants US regulators to look more closely at Jamie Dimon’s outfit’s dealings. While this piece from the European Commission outlines the takeover of a big German energy supplier by ‘a wholly owned subsidiary of IIF Int’l Holding L.P.’

The world of corporate finance, eh!

The key to knowing who’s behind the Mynydd Fforch-dwm project seems to lie in Milan. Where, in February 2022, local company Falck was taken over by ‘investors’ advised by JP Morgan Chase, using the Renantis-Naturalis label, and further obscuring their activities by operating from the Cayman Islands. It was reported at the same time that Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners had taken out a 49% shareholding in Falck’s Welsh and Scottish onshore operations.

But these entities only invest other people’s money, we still don’t know where the money for Mynydd Fforch-dwm originates. Do those clowns in Corruption Bay even care?

UPDATE: Soon after putting this piece out I was contacted by a good source with further information. In the summer of 2023 Renantis linked up with Ventient Energy, and then last year, this resulted in a new company, Nadara.

Under various guises the new entity already has 10 sites in Wales.

Nadara is registered in Scotland using an Edinburgh address. It brands itself as a Scottish company, even claiming its name is derived from Scottish Gaelic, though it’s owned by an outfit registered in the EU tax haven of Luxembourg in November 2023.

A name associated with LuxBlue Holdco SARL is that of Paul Farmer. He’s also involved with IIF Int’l Holding, of the Caymans, which we encountered earlier. His Linkedin profile says he’s some kind of freelance.

The Blue element in the name may come from another link-up involving Renantis. This one with Blue Float Energy. They are doing deals in Scotland with the Crown Estate, which is of course devolved up there.

This may account for the clamour from politicians in Wales for the Crown Estate to be devolved here too, if only to show we’re getting some benefit from ‘renewables’.

I have no doubt that, once again, the trail leads back to the Cayman Islands. And so the question remains – where’s the money coming from?

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FINAL THOUGHTS (SOME RATHER PERTURBING)

When I began looking into Mynydd Fforch-dwm Energy Park I thought, from the name ‘Naturalis’, that I’d be seeing previously unknown companies, and fresh faces.

Boy! was I wrong.

Not only have we re-acquainted ourselves with loveable Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, through part of his empire operating out of a British Overseas Territory, but via the Italian connection we also bump into Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners again.

A good time to remember that a 25% stake in CIP is held by Danish turbine producer Vestas. Among Vestas directors and shareholders is former Danish PM (sometime MEP) Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Who’s married to Aberafan MP Stephen Kinnock.

(Thorning-Schmidt is also a director of the Islamic Development Bank and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.)

Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

By a remarkable coincidence, the planet-saving extravaganza planned for Mynydd Fforch-dwm is either in, or on the border of, the Aberafan constituency.

But even without that propinquity we can guarantee moolah from Mynydd Fforch-dwm making its way to Helle. (But will she share it with hubby?)

And of course that also applies to CIP’s involvement with Parabola Bute Energy.

As stated at the top, this project is justified by the ‘Welsh Government’ on the grounds that it’s a Development of National Significance. For which nation? We already produce more than enough electricity to meet Wales’s needs, so this project must be of national significance for England.

So where are the benefits to Wales?

We scar our hills, increase the risk of flooding, with foreign-built turbines and pylons owned by companies and ‘investors’ from God knows where that regularly catch fire or get blown over. They’re erected by crews brought in for the job, after which the only work is changing the oil, firing up the diesel generator to pretend the bloody things work, and collecting the dead birds and bats.

In real world terms wind turbines just mean higher electricity bills for everybody and falling property values for homes within sight and sound of the damn things.

There are no benefits to Wales whatsoever, apart from the pitiful ‘community funds’ . . . the green energy equivalent of beads and infected blankets.

As I wrote this, and saw so many links emerge, I wondered if it’s an attempt to forge a ‘renewables’ monopoly in Wales. For Jamie Dimon would get red carpet treatment if he visited Cardiff, as most Senedd Members would gleefully implement his demand to compulsorily purchase farmland for yet more turbines.

Thankfully, ‘over there’, Donald Trump sees through the plot to deindustrialise and impoverish the West. Which will make it increasingly difficult for European leaders to continue down the self-destructive path of Net Zero.

One day we’ll look back on the climate scam and wonder why otherwise sensible people fell for it all. Until then, we just have to keep fighting.

With truth on our side.

♦ end ♦

Buy me a coffee

Laundering Offshore Money The Green Way

On 01/10/202401/10/2024 By JacIn Business and Commerce, Environmentalism, Globalism, Labour Party34 Comments

This is a theme I’ve dealt with before, the links between corporate funders, politicians, and environmental groups; but this time it comes from a slightly different angle.

Though the message stays the same:

‘Man is destroying the planet, and the only way to save us from the “sixth global mass extinction event” is to end livestock farming and let corporations buy the land for trees, windfarms, and other forms of greenwashing; with the environmentalists who’ve campaigned to bring us to this point given land for ‘rewilding’ and other purposes.’

The losers will of course be 95% of us, certainly in the West. Our energy will be more expensive, as will our food, which will increasingly be made up of factory-produced ‘meat’, and insects. Our movements will be restricted and the private car will be viewed as a selfish and unnecessary luxury from which we must be alienated.

You’ll own nothing, you’ll live in 15-minute neighbourhoods, and you’ll be blissfully unaware of your enslavement (thanks to whatever’s been added to your food).

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QUADRATURE CAPITAL

This story starts with the revelation by Open Democracy (Sept 18) that the Labour party received £4m from Quadrature Capital, a somewhat questionable outfit to be found in that bastion of financial probity, the Cayman Islands. Here’s the company website.

The timing is interesting, because in April 2023 the Quadrature Capital shares held by founding directors, Greg Howard Skinner and Suneil Setiya, were transferred to QC Ventures Ltd. Though it took them almost a year to notify Companies House.

It’s often reasonable in such circumstances to assume the change actually took place at the time of notification, and was ‘backdated’. Which could mean that at the time the donation was made to the Labour party Quadrature Capital was still a UK-registered company.

Which might be significant because Open Democracy tells us . . .

Electoral Commission records suggest Labour received the donation in the one-week window between former prime minister Rishi Sunak announcing the general election and the start of the ‘pre-poll reporting period’ in which all political donations over £11,180 had to be published weekly . . . .

The Cayman Islands is of course a British Overseas Territory, one of many offering ‘financial services’ with no questions asked. In fact, these repositories and conduits for dirty money play a vital role in maintaining the pre-eminence of the City of London.

The excellent video below (1:17:52) explains the situation very well. More especially, how and why this system came about. I urge you to watch it.

As I’ve said, the hedge fund that gave Labour £4,000,000 is Quadrature Capital.

But we’tre going to focus on Quadrature Climate Foundation. A semi-detached company registered with Companies House, that’s also a charity, with its own declared annual income of £130m.

The four directors / trustees are, the parent company Quadrature founders, Suneil Setiya and Greg Skinner; then Neil Paul Cosgrove, with a recent recruit being Jennifer Hooke. (Though Ms Hooke had previously been a director.)

The reason I’m telling you this is because a number of Welsh links have emerged. Far too many in my view.

And even though the story of Labour donations is new, the news of Quadrature splashing the cash to environmental groups was first reported in the Guardian in June last year.

Though what seemed to vex the Grauniad was that . . .

Quadrature Capital has stakes worth more than $170m (£135m) in fossil fuel companies

Which is a fraction of Quadrature’s total assets and a lot less than the millions given to pressure groups so they could subvert democracy by influencing governments’ policies behind the voters’ backs.

This generosity was . . .

. . . worth about £175m in 2021 and 2022. They included £4m to the European Climate Foundation . . . £2.7m to the Carbon Tracker Initiative; and more than £3m to the WWF.

The amount given to the European Climate Foundation has increased considerably, as I’ll explain in a minute. Which is why we’ll soon turn to the ECF.

But before that, and to give you some idea of the links between tax haven money, the Labour party, and envirogrifter pressure groups, here are some tweets from journalist Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) last week.

This refers to Rachel Kyte, Starmer’s climate envoy . . . and also of Quadrature. Here’s Daniel Luhde-Thompson, and here’s who I take to be his wife. She became a director of Friends of the Earth in March.

Though a woman I think is Naomi’s mother, Ursel Luhde, was a FoE director from January 2007 until October 2009. Also a director of Friends of the Earth Charitable Trust in the same period.

I know this is heavy going, so here’s some light relief . . . another journalist, Robert Peston (@Peston), put out this post on X after learning that Quadrature claimed to be paying Corporation Tax!

All in all, there’s something not right about Quadrature.

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EUROPEAN CLIMATE FOUNDATION (ECF)

Let’s start with the website of this outfit that by my calculations has had $46,127,158 from Quadrature Climate Foundation. Here’s a link to the ‘active grants’ page on the website. And here’s a link to its most recent annual report.

At the top of the ECF website homepage you read pious drivel that includes . . .

Our vision is a greener, more peaceful and democratic Europe made possible by climate action.

This seems to suggest that democracy and peace depend on Europe following the green path. And, by implication, if we deviate from that path of self-righteousness then we imperil democracy and risk war.

But that’s absolute bollocks. Net zero means more people being colder, more people being hungrier, more people being miserable, because they can no longer afford the essentials and the harmless luxuries their parents took for granted.

For the first time in generations living standards in the West are declining. This has nothing to do with a ‘climate crisis’, and everything to do with measures being pursued in response to this mirage, that in reality serve another purpose.

When we consider conflict, then man is no different to other animals. He is less likely to be aggressive when he’s content, when life is good. But net zero means shortages; and competition for scarce resources or produce always leads to conflict.

Well-fed lions loll about in the shade. Hungry lions look for something to kill.

Lower down the ECF homepage we find another gem. Click on ‘read more’ under ‘2023 annual report’, and you’ll see . . .

2023 not only tested our resilience but also underscored the critical importance of our mission, amid heightened political polarisation, a worrying resurgence of populism, and profound geopolitical upheaval.

“A worrying resurgence of populism“. Well it don’t worry this ol’ boy none.

To the ECF ‘populism’ means the long overdue awakening we see across Europe, wrongly limited by a dishonest media to ‘far right’ protests against immigration.

But the planet-savers know ‘populism’ also means people asking why net zero means the de-industrialisation of the West, making life more difficult, and more expensive.

Put it all together and the ECF is the authentic voice of the Globalist-Woke-Green-Left. Dangerously unhinged oligarchs and corporate leaders demanding censorship, and encouraging ‘women with penises’ to push the climate scam on the days when they and the comrades are not demanding open borders and supporting Muslim terrorists.

Yup, the full package (and that is not a reference to ‘transgender women’).

One of the groups funded by the ECF is the Green Finance Institute Ltd. (Formerly Green Finance Initiative Ltd.) Where the CEO is Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, who is of course Welsh, and you’ll be reading more about her in the next section.

The Green Finance Institute has also donated to Labour.

What I found interesting about Dr Thomas is that her background is in banking, not matters environmental. Dare I suggest that she may be less concerned with saving us from our selfish selves than with using the climate scam to make mountains of moolah for those with whom she normally mixes?

(Slaps self on wrist for ungenerous thought!)

◊

GREEN FINANCE INSTITUTE & THE WELSH CONNECTIONS

What more can I tell you about Rhian-Mari Thomas, of the Green Finance Institute?

Well, for a start, she’s been accepted at Davos. And she’s a trustee at the World Wildlife Fund.

And this intriguing article from my favourite fish-wrap seems to confirm the suspicions I just aired about who Rhian-Mari represents. Unless of course her friends are offering to save the planet out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.

The chief executive of the Green Finance Institute (GFI) . . . had grown increasingly concerned about Labour’s £28bn green investment pledge.

The party should not have even considered using that much taxpayer cash, Thomas argued. Instead, it should engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects.

The Green Finance Institute has received $3,830,267 from Quadrature Climate Foundation. I can’t find if it’s also been funded by the European Climate Foundation.

Ms Thomas is also an advisor to Aviva, which greenwashes investors’ money through wildlife trusts and other shrieker collectives. Seeing as I regularly mention wildlife trusts on this blog I found this interesting.

Another link between ‘ethical'(!) investments and wildlife trusts is Greenpeace veteran, Jocelyn Joseph Talbot Garman, of Bristol, executive director at the ECF. For since January ‘Joss’ has been a trustee of that old favourite, Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.

UPDATE: Through his paternal grandmother Jocelyn belongs to the Dorset branch of the Anglo-Norman (long resident in Ireland) Talbot de Malahide family. His father, David Edmund Talbot Garman, moved to Radnorshire around 1972, and was for many years vice-chair of Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.

A name we encountered earlier was that of Daniel Luhde-Thomson, who’s said to have given Labour £500,000 this year. The woman I believe to be his wife, Naomi Luhde-Thomson, was appointed early in 2022 to the Eryri National Park Authority by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

Another name we ran into was that of Neil Paul Cosgrove. One of the four trustees of the Quadrature Climate Foundation. I did a search, and what I turned up was rather odd, and I’m not sure what to make of it. But it’s yet another Welsh connection with offshore entities.

My search took me to the North Data site, which I find useful as it suggests various links and connections. This is what I found.

The links to the left we know about, they’re Quadrature, but what of the others?

Greendoor Investments Ltd is based in Bermuda. And it links with Beaubridge Energist LLP, which uses an address in Hampshire but is registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC371398). Chaffer, Rigby and Clevely are among the partners in this LLP, as is Cosgrove himself.

But it doesn’t end there. For there are other companies under the ‘Energist’ flag. One being, Energist (Holdings) Ltd, using a Swansea address. Where we find Beaubridge Energist LLP shown as the majority shareholder.

Listed among other Beaubridge companies on the Companies House website we find Beaubridge Swansea LLP. Though it’s difficult to see why it carries that name. For this is a company using the same Hampshire address and is also registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC432171).

There are two other companies at the Swansea address. Neogen Plasma Ltd, in the business of “manufacture of medical and dental instruments and supplies“. This is owned by Belmont Investments Ltd, and Belmont is owned by Energist Holdings Ltd.

I’m concerned that companies in my home town, involved in ostensibly harmless activities, have links with offshore companies pumping money into the Labour party, while also looking for greenwashing opportunities, and funding envirogrifters to buy up Welsh land.

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CONCLUSION

Another clue to the big picture comes from a Wales Environment Link (WEL) document, ‘Pathways to 2030: 10 key areas for investment in nature’s recovery across Wales’. (WEL is based in the Tramshed, you’ll be surprised to learn!)

On the first page (para 5), we read:

A recent study for the Green Finance Institute estimated that there is a gap of between £5 billion and £7 billion between the resources currently dedicated to nature recovery actions in Wales and those needed to meet priority outcomes for nature.

Here we have Rhian-Mari Thomas’s Green Finance Institute arguing that we need £5bn to £7bn to save Wales from becoming a desert.

But the ‘Welsh Government’ can’t spare that kind of money. So where might it come from? Rhian-Mari has already told us, in her reported conversation with Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Thomas argued . . . engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects

I’m sure she’s given the same message to the ‘Welsh Government’.

Because there’s a lot of money in offshore tax havens. Not always dirty money from drugs and other criminal activities, but still, money that cannot be honestly accounted for. How best to use it?

One answer is cashing in on environmental hysteria. Because by their very nature, envirogrifters are ideal for those seeking to, er, ‘relocate’ money currently sunning itself in tax havens. Unscrupulous people who will egg on the planet savers to make ever more apocalyptic claims.

Because it’s in the interests of both corporate investors and envirogrifters. The greater the hysteria, and the more readily the politicians fall for it, then the larger the sums of money it’ll be argued are needed to put things right. Money that governments either don’t have or can’t spare.

So let me finish by suggesting that . . .

Nobody should be allowed to accept funding that originates offshore, even if it’s been ‘filtered’ through organisations like the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, and the Green Finance Institute.

Tax haven money is too often dirty money. That’s why it’s in a tax haven. And why it’s always looking for opportunities to be laundered.

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Jac o' the North

Tag: Cayman Islands

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