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Dresden When the 100 seats in room N 1.05 of the district court of Dresden were occupied, the atmosphere in front of the entrance boiled: "It's a mess, they do not let's go in, "Raymund Neumann mocked. The former broker of Großenhain has invested more than 150,000 euros in profit sharing rights and obligations of the Infinus Group. "I do not have much hope of seeing the money again," he said. Now he was not even allowed to follow Monday's verdict. The door is closed in front of his nose. In the lobby, the President of the Grand Chamber of Commerce, Hans Schlüter-Staats, came quickly to the point: Eight years in prison for Patriarch Infinus Jörg Biehl (56) for commercial fraud and investment fraud. Four former co-defendants of the Infinite Empire were also sentenced to long prison terms ranging from five years to four months and six years and ten months. Another employee was sentenced to four and a half years in prison.
Judgment is the provisional closing point of one of the largest economic criminal proceedings in German history. The prosecution had accused executives of having set up a pyramid scheme, having budgeted budgets and cheated investors.
In order not to let the process go too far, prosecutors focused solely on some of the investors in the complex business network around Infinus AG and Future Business KG (Fubus ). It is therefore only about 22,000 investors who have deceived the managers according to the prosecutor between 2011 and 2013 of about 320 million euros. In total, more than 50,000 investors would have invested up to two billion euros in the 22 companies of the Infinus Group
Non-Believer Investors
The process was, however, very complex: since November 2015, the House has been negotiating, and over 160 days the court has heard 220 witnesses. The indictment summarizes 757 pages of investigation results, which fill 60 cases and 15,000 pages in the main file
When the judge announced the conditions of detention Monday, a whisper has crossed the auditorium. In the scandal are still surprisingly numerous investors on the part of the defendants. They believe in the line of argument of defenders: Without state intervention, the group would still live today. Investors Neumann was also convinced: "There must be high prison terms, otherwise the state would have been embarrbading."
The room around Schlüter-Staats was not impressed by this mood. This is not a viable economic model that could have generated the promised returns, explained the president of the court.
The business model was not complicated at the beginning: since the beginning of the millennium, the Infinus group has been buying individuals their life insurance and continued under their own name. Private sellers have again invested the money collected in the Group's products, such as fixed-rate bonds, profit-sharing rights and, most importantly, bond bonds. For a long time, they learned nothing about the difficulties of the companies because the interest was paid.
However, at one point, managers could only pay fresh money for new investors, the court was convinced. With more and more unusual ideas, managers would have rigged up cash. Thus, the Fubus Group has closed on its own daughters or employees life insurance of large volume. With their terms of 30 years, the contracts immediately took away millions in the coffers. Employees then had to pay monthly premiums of 30,000 euros or more. Towards the end, the managers still had the idea of selling gold savings plans.
As long as the affair was going well, the celebrities came in the spotlight. The best athletes went to the annual meetings for the best intermediaries. Oliver Kahn, Franz Beckenbauer and Katharina Witt celebrated with the distributors. On the occasion of its tenth anniversary, former Saxon Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf wrote a greeting which the "Sächsische Zeitung" quoted: "The company could" restore people's confidence in this economic sector so severely damaged by many powerful financial institutions. "Today, the words sound like derision.
End of a big party
The big party ended abruptly in November 2013. At that time, the investigators were suddenly in offices and apartments, the six directors were arrested, the handcuffs were clicked, the buildings were searched, bankruptcies followed later. Business will therefore interpret judgment as meaning that intervention in snowball systems must be possible before they collapse of themselves. They criticize the authorities for doing too little.
The defendants resisted the allegations until the very end. Jörg Biehl had in his "last words" a few days ago one last time the black prosecutor Peter. Infinus was a success story that "did not suit some people."
What is the difference between the prosecutor's point of view: she had to intervene to avoid even more damage. The opposite positions have not converged in three years. In the end, the fronts hardened. The public prosecutor demanded high prison sentences, for Jörg Biehl even eight years of imprisonment, defenders, however, acquittal.
At the final argument, the bitterness of the participants broke several verbal tracks. While the prosecutor accused the Infinite rulers of "Fake News," the defendant's defendant complained that the chamber had a "throwing up" bias. The presiding judge thanked Biehl's defender Ulf Israel for the closing speech, "but not for insults."
In this context, it is not surprising that Israel announced that the Handelsblatt was going to revise. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) must therefore consider the judgment for possible errors of law, but new evidence is no longer collected. The judgment is long but not definitive. The main criticism of Israel is the selection of judges. "The room has been badly managed from the beginning," he says.
In Germany, judges are not allowed to influence the procedures that they negotiate, they are badigned to their process of "blind robbery". The opposite was the case with Infinus, Israel criticized: "Schlüter-Staats wanted the procedure, and he had it."
In addition, the court rejected extensive evidence from defense lawyers, who must also be reviewed by the BGH. Tricky talks about an interim report from the Dresden Tax Office. In 2017, the agency found that Infinus had "a financially viable business model".
By these words, the authority refused a claim for reimbursement of 17 million euros from a bankruptcy trustee. The Treasury also provided a cliff record for the line of defense that the Infinus raid had borne the death blow. "However, the court did not want to hear any representative of the tax authorities as a witness," says Israel. "It can not be."
Investment Fraud
The verdict of guilt is now clear on innumerable civil cases as a result of the bankruptcy of Infinus. Investors in Prosavus AG, which had invested in profit-sharing rights, are particularly affected. The insolvency administrator, Frank-Rüdiger Scheffler, asks them in about 800 proceedings up to 15 million euros to repay interest.
Scheffler is convinced that the profit-driven interest was poorly distributed, since there were no profits. The verdict now supports his point of view. For investor Raymond Neumann in front of the audience room, this is not good news. "They want me to come back to 68,000 euros," he said. Then he left the courthouse with sadness.
