Rodney Whiston-Dew, 71, has been ordered to serve a further eight years and ninth months imprisonment after failing to pay a confiscation order for £2.7m due from gains made from the fraudulent eco-investment scheme at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

He was part of a group of five who promoted the eco-scheme and convinced investors they were operating environmental research and development projects into carbon credits in Brazil and China. They told investors they would be eligible for tax relief and encouraged them to make claims to HMRC.

A total of 730 investors signed up to the scheme, including celebrities such as comedians, sports stars, and relatives of politicians.

The fraudsters attracted more than £65m in investment in the ‘green’ scheme. However, only £16m of this was spent on planting trees.

Instead of investing the funds, the group stole £20m of the investors’ money and laundered it via bank accounts and secret trusts, spending it on luxury properties in London, Australia, and Dubai as well as hidden offshore investments. They also failed to pay around £6.5m in tax.

Whiston-Dew was convicted and sentenced in 2017 with four others of cheating the public revenue. Two years later, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) secured a confiscation order through the courts for £2,732,788.96. Due to interest charges the total amount now due is £3,463,224.11.

So far, Whiston-Dew has only paid back £70,409.56. This meant that the CPS took him to back to court to recover the non-payment of the full amount and requested the District Judge to activate an additional prison sentence instead.

Adrian Foster, chief crown prosecutor of the CPS proceeds of crime division, said: ‘Rodney Whiston- Dew failed to pay back the £2.7m that he owed, so the CPS have returned him to court and now he has had an additional default sentence of eight years and nine months imprisonment on top of his original sentence.

‘We worked with HMRC to make sure he did not benefit from the proceeds of his crime, but he has only paid back a paltry amount of his available assets.

‘Even when fraudsters are convicted and sentenced the CPS will continue to robustly pursue them for the money they owe, or they risk remaining in prison for many more years if they fail to pay their order in full.’

Whiston-Dew’s fellow fraudsters, Evdoros Demetriou and Michael Richards, were returned to prison in 2021 to serve an additional nine and six years in prison for failing to pay back £4.6m and £9.9m respectively. In total, all five offenders were told to repay £20.6m.