The Entire Story of the Envion ICO Scandal
Back in January 2018, the Envion ICO became part of the top ten biggest ICOs and even crowdfunding campaigns in history, gathering $100 million.
Focused at damaging and regularize the cryptocurrency mining sector with state-of-the-art Mobil Mining Units and an expert team, the Swiss-run project which is considered to do remarkable deeds, supposedly ended deals with IBM and the leader of Dubai.
From the look of things, the plan did not go as plan. The team said that the deals were successful, and the aim provided to investors are yet to be met and obviously it is not certain if they ever will.
The firm has now become involved in a serious slander with the developers and CEO going against each other, pointing fingers at each other of fraud. The firm, which is supposed to have been paying dividends to investors by now, is disrupted with investors seeking for their money on social media.
CEO Matthias Woestmann, who funded one of the biggest solar energy operations in Germany, says that the developers illegally developed more than a million additional tokens to make more money with the recognition of the board, while founders say that Woestmann fraudulently took over the firm and failed to destroy tokens he had.
Days after Woestmann published a video, stating that 20 million tokens not 40, were fraudulently rased. Questioned about the obvious contradiction in token amount, Woestmann nooted:
“There is no contradiction: 41m Tokens have been created without the knowledge and permission of the board. 24m of them are totally illegal because they are not covered by the prospectus. And I generally would say that the German judicial system will bring light into the suspected large-scale fraud.”
Woestmann went on to explain in his video that a new token is being developed to invalidate the value of the previous tokens and pay out investors the share that they are owed when operations started. He expressed his silence for the past two months regarding the lander by stating “I could not go to the public with these problems without having a solution.”
He explains that the financial regulator of Switzerland has been notified of his detail of events and that criminal complaint has been filed in Germany. He stated, “we will replace the of Envion token by a new token that carries the full payout rights for you.”
He went on to add that he only had $50 million of the raised funds available, noting the developers did not say the truth about the amount of money raised. With regards to the problem of operations, Woestman noted:
“Mass production hasn’t started yet.”
On the other hand, Michael Luckow, who is leading the developers is telling a different tale. The developer’s names and credentials is no longer on the Team page on the Envion website, but they have introduced their individual site to attract their investors directly through a series of blog posts and video updates.
They made a series of complaints against Woestmann, dealing with the sudden change is his story relating to the 20 million token difference in his two statements.
“In the wake of his legal troubles, Mr. Woestmann has reinterpreted the ICO prospectus, its guiding legal document, to exclude tokens sold to pre-sale investors from the greater pool of sale tokens.”
The developers claim he stopped contact with them and state in a meeting that he is taking complete control of the firm, a move that they consider as the world’s first ‘analogue hacking’ of an ICO.
They accused Woestmann of illegally obtaining a leading share in Envion AG and are presently suing the firm.
“Woestmann was tasked with forming envion as an AG company in Switzerland and later appointed a CEO with a 19% stake in the company. The founders pooled their 81% of shares via a jointly-held company, Trado GmbH.
Woestmann pushed for an agreement in the name of expediency whereby the CEO would control the founders’ shares to speed up decision-making for the initial set-up of the company and transfer them to Trado shortly before the ICO. Instead, he didn’t comply with the founders’ request to transfer shares and covertly issued more shares via a capital increase which left them with only 33% ownership. And no information whatsoever prior to that of the founders.”
The developers went on to add that Woestmann is responsible for not destroying the additional tokens not used after the ICO ceased.
“We are ready to build the product. Containers should be rolling off the assembly line and we should be installing mining units. The plan was to pay back dividends to our investors by now. We can’t do that because we are blocked by Mr. Woestmann. It’s not clear that he is making any positive contribution to Envion’s business,” said Luckow.
