Investors have been robbed of their retirement savings. They invested with gold trader PIM believing the gold equivalent was in a vault somewhere. After two years…
A sign indicates the entrance to court building A of the Darmstadt Regional Court.
(© Christoph Schmidt/dpa/archive picture)
Darmstadt (dpa) – – In the trial against the insolvent gold trader PIM, the prosecution before the Darmstadt regional court has sought a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for the 51-year-old former chief executive. He considers the crimes of serious fraud and money laundering to be proven. “The business model was fraudulently planned from the beginning,” prosecutor Hanno Wilke said Wednesday. The enterprise caused damages of more than 100 million euros.
The Heusenstamm company PIM Gold is said to have concluded supply contracts with customers from 2016 to September 2019, including promises of bonuses for gold, but failed to fulfill them. The interest is said to have been paid with money from new clients hired under some sort of pyramid scheme. The defendant has been in custody since September 2019.
Less and less gold has been sent to investors, Wilke said. Instead, they were led to believe that the gold was being stored. “In fact, that never happened.” The filing was only on paper. Investors would only see a bank statement. “The defendant controlled PIM economically,” Wilke stressed.
Prosecutor Lucia Wülfing also had the money laundering charge confirmed. This resulted in criminal profits from a fraudulent business in Frankfurt, which are said to have been transferred to Turkey via the gold trader’s accounts. There the money is said to have flowed to supporters of the Frankfurt business.
A former employee of the gold merchant started the process with a complaint in May 2017. In July 2019, the company was raided and the arrest warrant against the former CEO was executed almost two months later. The company eventually went bankrupt. “It would have been desirable if we had reacted more quickly,” Wilke said of the investigation and the time between the exhibition and the search. The damage could have been more limited.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the defendant had several characteristics of serious fraud. He has brought other people in financial trouble. Plus, there’s a huge amount of damage. He was also considered in the criminal complaint that he had made a partial confession and had no criminal record. We must also take into account that he has been in custody for more than three years, he has two daughters and the duration of the proceedings for two years due to the pandemic. The pandemic has also made pre-trial detention more difficult.
In an earlier statement, the defendant admitted, according to his lawyer, that he should have known about the company’s situation as early as 2017. He also gave his family the impression that everything was fine and that business was going well. The defendant did not admit active participation in the alleged fraud. The defense is expected to speak on Tuesday. According to the court’s plans, the verdict should be pronounced before Christmas.
The bankruptcy trustee Renald Metoja explained the scale of the trial. He spoke of over 7,000 creditors with legitimate and verified claims for 140 million euros. The investors in the bankruptcy proceedings were repaid a small part of their claims from the assets.
This article was originally published on November 30, 2022 at 03:07 am.
