This makes the company technically bankrupt, as they say. This does not mean that the company will actually go bankrupt, but it does mean that if the company were to be closed down now, debts would be left behind.
This is evident from documents that the company filed with the Chamber of Commerce this week.
Commercial branch
Forum for Democracy BV was founded to earn money from activities ‘arising from the political and social work of Forum for Democracy’. Consider the sale of merchandise and the publishing and sale of books.
In the webshop, sympathizers can buy a series of books, mainly by Thierry Baudet, but also hoodies, mugs and flags with the party logo on them.
26,000 euros in the min
That turns out not to be very lucrative. Last year the company plunged into the red. While there was still a modest equity of 19,844 euros on the balance sheet in 2021, this had turned into a negative equity of 26,290 euros in 2022. This means that the company has more debts than assets.
The total debt amounted to 88,699 euros on December 31, 2022. On the other hand, 62,409 euros in assets are on the balance sheet. The BV owes the lion’s share of that debt to the political party, as appears from the party’s annual report. On the same date, the Association Forum for Democracy, the party, was still owed more than 69,000 euros from the commercial BV.
2022 bad year
Forum acknowledges that 2022 was not a good year commercially for the BV and that turnover has fallen. “There were no elections in 2022. In election years, turnover is a lot higher,” a spokesperson said.
But the BV also had to deal with a setback, because it wrote off the entire stock of a book by Member of Parliament Derk Jan Eppink.
It’s about the book European Realism, with a foreword by Thierry Baudet. The FvD leader is even on the cover of the book, which was published in 2019 and is available as an e-book on Bol for 12 euros.
That book had been withdrawn from sale because Eppink had exchanged the Forum voor Democratie faction for that of JA21. He has now switched to the BBB, but after the elections he will not return to Parliament unless he is elected with preferential votes.
Not bankrupt
In any case, the depreciation of the stock means that the assets of Forum voor Democratie BV have become significantly less valuable, causing the company to end up in the red.
Forum for Democracy emphasizes that the BV is ‘certainly not facing bankruptcy’.
2023-11-25 12:50:24
#Commercial #company #Forum #Democracy #debt
