African Land and Reforestation Projects have both been named and shamed on the city regulator’s website.
The former, also known as Agri Capital, offers investments in rice farm harvests in Sierra Leone, and the latter, also known as Capital Carbon Credits, offers investments in carbon credits generated from land in Sierra Leone, Brazil and Australia.
A statement said: “We do not regulate the sale of land, property or carbon credits, but we do regulate CISs and a firm must be authorised by us to operate them from the UK.
“We also believe the defendants made misleading statements or gave false information when promoting the schemes to investors.”
The High Court has ordered a preliminary trial to decide whether the schemes are CISs, which is likely to take place in the autumn.
If found guilty, the firms may be ordered to pay compensation to the FCA, which will then be distributed to investors.
The majority of assets of most of the defendants have been frozen in order to protect as much of the holdings as possible and to prevent the schemes from taking more money from new or existing investors.
Earlier in the month the FCA banned a broker for failing to put policies he had sold a client into place.
