An entrepreneur who has raised millions of pounds in his pursuit of creating a green fuel from animal waste is facing a revolt from Scottish investors.
Martin Frost has been striving to commercialise a methanol additive to convert cow dung into clean diesel for tractors, cars and trucks since 2014.
Frost, once branded a vexatious litigant by the Scottish Crown Office, has secured financial backing from more than 700 investors but some who have committed at least £500,000 have raised concerns amid allegations of poor accounting and a lack of transparency.
Separately, shareholders intend to lodge a complaint with Police Scotland that they were encouraged by Frost to invest in a share scheme with a “guaranteed” return that some allege was fraudulent.
Alistair Munro, a Scottish businessman, invested £750,000 with Frost but claims he was “cut off” after questioning how his money had been spent.
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“I’ve started to wonder if there was ever an intention to bring this great idea to market,” he said.
Another investor, Andew Elliot, a Borders farmer, said: “We’d like transparency and to know where the money has gone or there needs to be a police investigation.”
Details of the police complaint emerged last week on a private forum run by disgruntled shareholders, almost 300 of whom took advantage of a one penny share scheme promoted by Frost in October for a company, Gennfros. They claim they were told a fresh crop of investors were ready to buy the shares for £3.
A post submitted on the forum stated: “A number of Gennfros shareholders intend to file a formal complaint of investment fraud with the authorities . . . the ‘new investors’ who were to make these offers, it is alleged, do not exist.”
The promise of cheap, sustainable fuel once earned Frost a favourable article in the highly respected magazine The Parliamentary Review. It described how dung from piemontese cattle is fed to an anaerobic digester to produce biogas that is converted into methanol, a fuel that mimics diesel but with zero carbon emissions and far lower levels of nitrogen oxides.
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Frost said world patents secured for his green fuel had attracted interest from JCB, investors in China, the Brazilian government and the Methanol Institute in America, but plans to bring the fuel to market under the Avocet brand had been disrupted by red tape.
Several legal cases have been brought against his firms including compensation claims for unpaid wages and unfair dismissal, and some companies set up under the Avocet umbrella have collapsed.
In March last year administrators were brought in to value assets, including farms in Scotland, and highlighted debts of millions of pounds. In August he was ordered to pay almost £11,000 to a former Avocet employee who was unfairly dismissed, according to a tribunal in Reading, Berkshire.
Frost said the threat of a police complaint “smacks of theatre”. He added that Avocet is a “significant net worth business, to be realised when the sale of the patents comes home”.