Ponzi scheme: investors break down with ghost containers



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A The 54,000 investors who have purchased an expedition container as an investment at P & R in recent years can not expect much of their efforts. Although the vendor has sold about 1.6 million "big cube container" type savers, in reality only 618,000 on the world's oceans are on the way, as has officially confirmed it. insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé.

The company has "clearly signed contracts with investors for many years about containers that never really existed and were not purchased," says Jaffé. The newly collected money was used by the company to pay rent promised to investors and redeem the containers.

China also exceeds Germany on the sea

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Large freighters will dominate trade with Asia in the future, but mainly medium-sized container shipments come from Germany. Thus, the German maritime industry will continue to lose in importance.

Source: WELT / Kevin Knauer

In general, there is talk of a pyramid scheme in such a case. Jaffé sees at least the suspicion of fraud confirmed by his research. Investors had recently invested about 3.5 billion euros in containers.

Profits were in the predictable setting

The gap between appearance and being has widened more and more since 2007. At the time, P & R was considered the largest owner of marine containers in the world. The bankruptcy procedure was officially opened. The bustle of P & R proves to be more and more one of the most important scandals of German post-war history: the Göttingen, Prokon and S & G groups. K

. failed. Before tax, it was an expected return of five percent – after taxes, about three percent. This is not an order of magnitude that should have skeptical investors from the beginning.

The gray capital market tends to be attracted by returns that are twice or even three times higher. In addition, there have been no problems in the history of P & R for more than 40 years until the application for bankruptcy, rents and money for the redemption is still flowing. In February and March, P & R had transferred money. Then the contract opened because sales stagnated and liquidity was lacking.

Selling, then renting back and forth

The business model provided that the business sold new and used containers to investors and returned them directly to them. sublet. In the last offer a container would have cost 2720 euros. The rent per day was set at 0.81 euros.

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The company, based in Grünwald near Munich, has offered investors the opportunity to buy back the containers after five years for a projected residual value of 65% of the initial participation.

19659012] Insolvency Administrator Jaffé intends to continue his business with shipping companies and leasing companies as long as possible to minimize damage. "A hasty sale of a well-rented and almost fully used container fleet would unnecessarily destroy badets at the present time."

The rental business is run by the subsidiary of Zug, Switzerland, which must be bankrupt to transfer its income to German creditors can flow. On the other hand, there is not much to gain from shareholders and managers, even though he has already made claims against them, said Jaffe. Two directors have died meanwhile, company founder Heinz Roth is helping with the investigation.

call for investors

Jaffé called on investors to let him recycling the container. "It is only through a coordinated recovery of insolvency procedures that investor damage can be minimized." The recycling of the container by the investor himself is not possible since the individual container can not affect a specific investor.

The mere transfer of a number of a particular type of container is not enough to determine which containers were meant in detail, Jaffé said. This has been confirmed by the District Court Munich I in the meantime. This does not change anything in the rare cases in which investors would have received a certificate from a P & R company after the conclusion of the contract.

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  Teesport, Containerhafen. A fully loaded container ship goes to the container port of Teesport (United Kingdom). Photo: Winfried Rothermel | Global Utilization

Investors now have until September 14 to file their claims with the Trustee in Bankruptcy. Even savers who have already claimed their rights prior to the opening of bankruptcy proceedings must re-register their claims with the bankruptcy table to be taken into account.

The corresponding forms should be delivered in early August. For the first meetings of creditors on 17 and 18 October, Jaffé rented the Olympiahalle in Munich with 12,500 seats as a precautionary measure because of the large number of casualties.

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