Scottish estate owner caught up in £800m fraud inquiry

A WEALTHY Cairngorm landowner was caught up in an alleged £800 million money laundering and fraud scam that allegedly “cheated” investors out of their money, The Ferret can reveal.

Liechtenstein businessman Alexander Bryan Jeeves and his financial services firm, Jeeves Group, were listed among defendants in a series of US civil court cases spanning from 2007 to 2016.

They were accused among many other defendants of being part of a “fraudulent enterprise” which duped investors out of “hundreds of millions of dollars”.

The allegations in the court action were that some of the defendants set up an alleged “Ponzi” scheme – a type of fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors until it collapses. Much of the funds were funnelled into shell firms based in offshore tax havens, a 2007 court document claimed.

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Jeeves told The Ferret that clients managing the scheme in the US “decided to allegedly misuse the funds”, which were “never managed” by his company. He and other defendants paid an agreed settlement of around £78,430 in 2012.

He confirmed that the judgment was lifted and also said that they informed all regulatory bodies and banks, all of whom were satisfied with the outcome.  The businessman, who still heads Jeeves Group, was listed as the true, “beneficial” owner of a firm which owns land near Grantown-On-Spey in light of new transparency laws introduced last year.

Jeeves’s Highland estate

THE Ferret examined the foreign owners of property listed in Registers of Scotland’s 2023 country of origin company report, which was published in March. Among the owners was Umena Management Limited, which is registered in  St Vincent and the Grenadines, a Caribbean tax haven.

Jeeves (below) was last year listed as a beneficial owner of Umena on UK business registry, Companies House – a requirement of new transparency laws brought in by the UK Government.

Businessman Alexander Bryan Jeeves allegedly owns a firm which owns a wooded area in GrantownOn-Spey (Image: Supplied)

The company owns property including farms, homes and Claggernich Wood near Grantown-On-Spey. It also has rights to hold shooting and sporting activities on nearly 1000 hectares of land.

Umena benefited from £871,765 of public money from the Scottish Government’s scheme to support rural businesses, according to a freedom of information response.

There is no suggestion that Umena, an offshore company, has avoided tax in Scotland. But Scotland’s top land reform expert, Andy Wightman, argued that it should not have received taxpayer money. The ownership revelations exemplify that “important reforms” are needed,  he claimed.

“Firstly, it is disappointing that proposals to restrict land ownership to EU entities were not included in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, having been consulted on last year,” said Wightman. “Secondly, companies registered in St Vincent and the Grenadines should not be eligible for public funds.”

Umena is also the former owner of Glenlochy Estate. Title deeds show that in 2009, Jeeves’s firm acquired land including the 2500-hectare for “certain good causes and considerations”, meaning no money exchanged hands.

In December 2022, Umena sold the estate to London spirits firm, Elixir Distillers Ltd, which renamed the property Tormore Estate. The “consideration” – the price or terms of the sale – was not revealed in official documents.

Wightman, however, said it is “a legal requirement” that the “consideration” for which land is transferred is revealed in the land register. But sale prices are “now routinely being concealed”, he added. “All of these matters [could be] dealt with if land reform was being taken seriously.”

Scotland’s ‘unhealthy ownership pattern’

COMMUNITY Land Scotland called for prospective landowners to face a “meaningful public interest test”.

Dr Josh Doble, policy manager, claimed that “too often, [landowners’] reasons for ownership are for investment, tax purposes or prestige rather than delivering wider social and economic benefits”.

He added: “This unhealthy ownership pattern is only exacerbated when landowners are based in tax havens and there are question marks over how their wealth has been accumulated and managed.”

Scottish Labour’s land reform spokesperson and Highland MSP, Rhoda Grant, said: “People who own huge tracts of land in Scotland should have to live and work on that land.

“We desperately need land reform to ensure that we know who the beneficial owners of land are and that they do not hide their financial transactions in tax havens. People who receive public funding should have to show that they also pay  their taxes.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “All applications for rural support payments are fully verified to ensure all scheme requirements have been met before any payment issues to the business that is applying.”

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The Agriculture and Rural Communities Bill, which was passed in the Scottish Parliament in June, “contains provisions to allow ministers to refuse or recover agricultural support from applicants when in the public interest,” they added.

Jeeves said that all his “property transactions, reporting and tax returns are being dealt with by reputable law firms and accountants in the UK”.

Jeeves ‘never managed’ Ponzi fund

HE stressed that the Ponzi scheme court case was a civil, rather than a criminal one, and related to a former US client of his company. It was handled by a US law firm which “set up a relatively comprehensive structure for those clients”, Jeeves told The Ferret.

Jeeves Group acted on behalf of a company which held shares in a regulated Isle of Man firm, of which the funds were managed in the US by clients who “decided to allegedly misuse the funds there”, he said.

“In fact, we never managed any funds at all. What followed was a relatively complicated lawsuit in various states in the US where plaintiffs filed complaints.”

Jeeves, his father and their companies were only named among the approximately 75 defendants because the man at the centre of the scandal claimed Jeeves Group owned the structure, Jeeves said.

“Obviously this was not true at all but it was enough to put us on the defendants list … Our US lawyers advised us to deny jurisdiction which we instructed them to do. In late 2010 there was a default judgment [of £126m] against ourselves and many others”.

Jeeves claimed he and his US lawyers were not served court documents and were only made aware by a media report in January 2011. “We then subsequently instructed our US lawyers to investigate and verify the situation,” he said. His lawyers advised him to offer a settlement, which was made “on the basis of a mutual release without any admission of liability”, meaning “we could also not sue the claimants anymore and vice versa”.

A 2012 court order Jeeves passed to The Ferret shows that he, his father and their companies paid out £78,430 ($100,000) – a settlement he said was “indicative of the substance of the claims”.

“The case may still be ongoing against the main defendants we believe, but are not sure as we have not been involved since,” Jeeves said. All banks used by Jeeves Group, and regulatory bodies in jurisdictions it has been active in, were informed of the case and were satisfied with the outcome, he claimed.