Gooood morning Crypto! Another day another ICO fraud shakes the crypto-scene. The German-Swiss crypto-mining startup, Envion AG, has called on crypto-exchanges around the world to cease trading in its EVN tokens. Apparently, a large number of tokens have been generated illegally, part of which is already in circulation. Envion’s CEO Matthias Woestmann announced the release of new EVN tokens and a token swap. Hmm, What happened?
Too many tokens, what happened?
Earlier this year, Envion AG announced it had raised more than $100 million with its ICO. It has now been discovered that, in addition to the 86 million EVN tokens issued legitimately in the ICO, another 40 million have been generated without the knowledge of the Board of Directors. These “stealth tokens” were parked on various wallets. Utilizing a cascade of wallet addresses up to 12 million tokens were redistributed and sold on crypto-exchanges. Each token had the nominal value of $1.00 in the ICO.
The German CEO Matthias Woestmann accuses Envion founders of having scrapped those millions from the ICO. That’s why he has filed a criminal complaint in Berlin, as the Handelsblatt reports. I have never experienced anything like this”, Woestmann told the newspaper. Accordingly, the second Board member has resigned too as did the company’s PwC accountants.
The above findings are detailed in the report of an independent Blockchain expert group, which was commissioned by envion AG. This report was verified and confirmed by Canadian security firm “Canadian Blockchain Intelligence Group” (BIG). Woestmann, consequently, filed a criminal complaint in Berlin and informed the Swiss financial supervisory authority FINMA.
Who did it?
CEO Woestmann considers the founding team led by Michael Luckow to be the culprits. Luckow, however, sees the whole case completely different – and is disappointed, as he explains in a video. He told Handelsblatt: “In the past, we had regular exchanges with Matthias Woestmann. According to his instructions, more tokens were created than needed. ” They allegedly were intended for an investor who later decided not to participate. Luckow further explains that he then asked Woestmann in writing to destroy the affected tokens. “He did not answer that.” The founders want to defend themselves legally.
Who owns the Company now?
The founding team now also takes legal action against Matthias Woestmann. It’s about the ownership structure of the company: The founders originally held 81 percent of Envion through Trado GmbH, but gave their voting rights to Woestmann. Woestmann diluted the shares of the founders in a round of financing to 33 percent without the founders approval. “Envion AG belongs to the founding team. Woestmann unlawfully stole the company from us.“
Woestmann wants to stop trading with the company’s EVN token according to Handelsblatt. The owners should exchange their tokens. The owners of the excessively issued tokens would run out of money and have to turn their claims to the founders, Woestmann told the newspaper. For this to be possible, the Swiss Financial Supervisory Authority has to agree.
The disputes have paralyzed the company. Not only is the company’s business in a kind of RIP mode – investors are also losing a lot of money. The tokens were still sold for about a dollar each during the ICO until recently. Today, the EVN token price imploded to 15 cents and lost more than 84% of their value since the ICO.
Great, isn’t it? Welcome to the ICO universe.
