When English solicitor Roy Daby wrote to OffshoreAlert on August 2, 2023, he was not responding to a routine complaint about a law firm or a client dispute. He was demanding that the publication remove his name from an article about a Mauritius company and warning that, unless it did so, he would take legal action. Daby said the article had published his name and home address, called that “clearly defamatory,” and stressed that whatever dispute OffshoreAlert had with businessman Brett “James” Jolly was Jolly’s problem, not his. He identified himself as a qualified lawyer in England and Wales.
The correspondence became newsworthy because Daby’s name was not appearing in the story at random. Corporate records and reporting place him in the orbit of companies connected to Jolly, a British businessman who was disqualified from serving as a UK company director after an insolvency-related court process. OffshoreAlert reported in August 2023 that Jolly had become a director of Cell Trader (Management) PCC in Mauritius alongside Daby and accountant Rishianandsingh “Rishi” Moorut. The publication said the people involved had links to earlier Jolly-controlled ventures in which investors lost more than £50 million.
That does not establish that Daby participated in fraud, nor does it show that he was responsible for losses suffered by investors in Jolly-linked businesses. The distinction matters. The available public record reviewed for this article documents Daby’s directorships and his professional relationship to the companies, but it does not establish a criminal conviction, guilty plea or regulatory finding that he committed investment fraud.
Daby, now 50, was admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales in June 2003. The Solicitors Regulation Authority currently lists him as an authorised solicitor under SRA number 293876 and says there are no disciplinary or regulatory decisions currently published against him. His current professional position is Managing Partner and Head of Commercial at Giles Wilson Solicitors, where the firm says he specialises in commercial and employment disputes, regulatory matters, aviation, sports law and director disputes.
His professional career predates the controversy by decades. A 2006 profile in Mauritius newspaper L’Express described Daby as a civil-law specialist practising in Britain, then a partner at Essex firm Jefferies Essex. It reported that he had qualified in 2003 after studying law at the University of London and had represented former Essex police officer David Clark in a successful High Court claim that resulted in £18,000 in damages.
The corporate record becomes more complicated when Daby’s earlier directorships are examined. Companies House records show that he was appointed a director of Green Planet Investment International Holdings Public Limited Company on February 22, 2012 and resigned in June 2012. Brett Jolly had previously been a director of the same company, serving from July 2010 until December 2012. The company was ultimately dissolved in 2014.
Green Planet was not an ordinary failed property company. In November 2013, the UK High Court ordered companies involved in the Green Planet investment operation into liquidation in the public interest after an Insolvency Service investigation. A Financial Ombudsman decision reproducing the Insolvency Service findings says the scheme took about £14 million from nearly 300 investors and marketed land and off-plan property in Natal, Brazil. Sales representatives allegedly used high-pressure techniques and exaggerated promises of 20–30% returns. The investigation also found that representatives persuaded investors they were dealing with a large UK-registered bank.
The court record is particularly significant because it did not merely describe Green Planet as a commercial failure. The grounds for winding up included what the court characterized as a lack of commercial probity, misleading or unfounded statements, lack of transparency and insolvency. The evidence reproduced in the Financial Ombudsman record says Green Planet had allowed its agent, Capital Alternatives Sales and Marketing Ltd., to make misleading statements concerning the investment opportunity, due diligence, planning permission, expected increases in land values and the progress of developments. The court concluded that winding-up orders were in the public interest.
Jolly’s role in that episode was more direct. Companies House records show him as a director of Green Planet Investment International Holdings, while contemporary reporting identified him as the ultimate owner of the wider Green Planet group. The UK company involved in marketing the investments, Capital Alternatives Sales and Marketing Ltd., had previously traded under the name Green Planet Investment. It was later placed into compulsory liquidation.
The consequences followed Jolly beyond Green Planet. A UK director-disqualification record identifies him as disqualified from April 14, 2017 until April 13, 2028 following proceedings involving Anglo-Capital Partners Ltd. The stated legal basis was section 6 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, concerning the duty of a court to disqualify an unfit director of an insolvent company.
Anglo-Capital Partners itself was wound up following an Insolvency Service investigation into carbon-credit sales. Contemporary accounts of the investigation say the company had raised more than £1 million while offering carbon credits as investments and promising returns of roughly 20–25% within two years. The company was subsequently placed into liquidation on public-interest grounds.
Jolly later became associated with Privilege Wealth, an international investment operation marketed around purported investments in payday loans. OffshoreAlert reported that the scheme raised more than £40 million and later collapsed, with investor redemptions suspended and a reported deficit exceeding $40 million. Later reporting described Privilege Wealth Plc as having entered administration with debts exceeding $38 million, while subsequent reporting placed the group’s deficiency at more than £42 million. These figures concern the wider Privilege Wealth operation, not Daby personally.
The story then moved into Mauritius. In July 2023, OffshoreAlert said it had obtained corporate records from the Mauritius Registrar of Companies concerning Cell Trader (Management) PCC. The following month it reported that Jolly was a director of the protected cell company alongside Daby and Rishi Moorut. OffshoreAlert characterized Cell Trader as another Jolly-controlled venture and linked the individuals to previous Jolly ventures.
Daby’s response was unequivocal. In his email to OffshoreAlert, he did not admit involvement in the investment schemes described by the publication. Instead, he objected to publication of his name and particularly his home address, saying that he was a qualified lawyer and warning that the correspondence could later be produced in court when damages, conduct and costs were considered. There is no evidence in the sources reviewed that the threatened lawsuit was subsequently filed or resulted in a judgment against OffshoreAlert.
The available record also shows that Daby continued his legal career after the controversy. Giles Wilson currently identifies him as Managing Partner and Head of Commercial, and Companies House lists him as an active director of Giles Wilson Law Limited. He is also listed as a director of Big Field Investments Ltd, incorporated in 2023.
There is an additional wrinkle in the Mauritius record. A 2025 government publication listing companies with unpaid annual registration fees includes Cell Trader (Management) PCC. That entry does not, by itself, establish insolvency, fraud or wrongdoing, but it indicates that the company’s corporate compliance status subsequently attracted an official registration-fee notice.
What emerges from the evidence is therefore more precise than a simple accusation against a solicitor. Roy Daby was a director of a Green Planet company for a short period in 2012, during a period when Jolly was also connected to the group. Years later, Daby was reported as a director of a Mauritius protected cell company alongside Jolly after Jolly had been disqualified in Britain. Jolly’s earlier business history includes companies wound up following government investigations and a court-ordered director disqualification. Those facts create a documented association, but they do not prove that Daby committed the misconduct attributed to Jolly or the companies involved.
That distinction is precisely why the paper trail matters. Corporate directorships can be brief, technical or substantive; they can also place professionals close to businesses whose histories later become controversial. In Daby’s case, the public record shows both sides of the story: a practising solicitor with no published SRA disciplinary decision and a substantial commercial-law career, but also a corporate history that includes directorships connected to businesses later scrutinised by regulators, courts and investigative journalists. His 2023 demand for removal did not erase those records. Nor do those records, standing alone, establish criminal liability. For investors, professionals and regulators, the lesson is the same one the documents repeatedly point toward: when money, corporate structures and professional reputations intersect, the most important questions are often found not in accusations or denials, but in the underlying filings, court orders and regulatory records.
Source:
OffshoreAlert
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