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The Financial Services Authority is investigating the illegal sale of shares in a company linked to Lord Guthrie, a former head of the Armed Forces.
BioDefense Corporation, based in Boston, Massachusetts, lists General Guthrie alongside retired Air Vice-Marshal Paul Robinson on its board of advisers. A third adviser to the company, which claims the rights to a machine that neutralises biological warfare agents sent through the post by terrorists, is R James Woolsey, a former head of the CIA.
The FSA investigation will be particularly embarrassing for Guthrie, who is personally licensed by the financial watchdog, having been a non-executive director of investment bank NM Rothschild.
Guthrie has made a number of public remarks about the dangers of terrorists exploiting easily produced agents such as anthrax. Last year he spoke at an event in Massachusetts, sponsored by Bio-Defense, saying: 'The biological threat is quite immediate and people should take more notice of it.'
In 2008 he served on a think-tank commission headed by former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown that warned terrorists could genetically alter existing diseases to make them more virulent.
BioDefense claims that its Mail-Defender machine, which resembles a dishwasher, uses ultraviolet light and microwaves to decontaminate letters and packets suspected of containing biological agents.
Shares in the company have been marketed by unlicensed 'boiler room' stockbroking firms, as well as by the company itself. The State Securities Board in Texas took legal action against BioDefense to halt an unauthorised share offering.
In Britain, the FSA has identified four brokers offering the shares as Myers Brunning Associates, Berkeley Connect, Taylor Wilson International and Stratton Wainwright.
A spokesman warned that all four firms were unlicensed and added: 'The FSA would like to hear from anyone who has been contacted by these firms or anyone regarding shares in BioDefense Corporation.'
A fifth firm marketing the shares is Hang Seng Financial, which claims to be based in Hong Kong.
Officially, BioDefense has issued its own alert against unauthorised approaches. But behind the scenes, it uses firms such as Hang Seng Financial to promote its own sale of new shares to keep the lossmaking business afloat.
There is no suggestion that Guthrie or Robinson are involved in the illegal sale of shares, but their presence as advisers to Bio-Defense is used as a marketing tool by the unlicensed brokers.
BioDefense, Guthrie and Robinson did not respond to invitations to comment.