The “crypto scandal” surrounding the USD 100 million ICO of the German-Swiss ENVION attracts media attention and generates big headlines. It is no longer just about facts, investor complaints, and official investigations, but also about the interpretative sovereignty on the case. Two generations of entrepreneurs fight on this battleground. A young digital native and internet entrepreneur meets a more pre-digital TV presenter and stock promoter. The media battle is correspondingly dramatic and entertaining.
ENVION and the making of reality
The ENVION case not only concerns authorities, lawyers, and courts but increasingly also the mainstream media. In ENVION’s home turf Germany, the $100 million ICO has, of course, attracted special attention. The leading German business media outlets HANDELSBLATT, MANAGER MAGAZIN and CAPITAL recently reported on the “crypto scandal” from quite different angles. Naturally well looked after by the media people of the two founding teams – litigation PR at its best.
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In addition, there is still intensive discussion in the various social channels around ENVION. While the ENVION board member Matthias WOESTMANN has largely withdrawn from the public and never really dealt with social media issues before, the founding team around Michael LUCKOW tries to maintain the sovereignty of interpretation of the “ENVION case” through intensive work on the social channels, professional press support via dedicated agencies and their own Founders Blog.
The team around LUCKOW aims to establish a reality that favors their view of the case regardless of the facts. The more than 30,000 ICO investors are their audience in this performance. Given the language barriers, this approach has its merits. The non-German speaking investors and observers depend on the translations of German documents and media articles. This is a perfect environment for making a reality. And given the suspicious past of WOESTMANN and his partner VAN AUBEL, the LUCKOW team was given a head start in the media battle.
The Founder Team’s”meme warriors”
Dissenting opinions are being fought against without compromise. The HANDELSBLATT article on the “crypto-scandal” ENVION has not found the approval of the ENVION founders. So LUCKOW’s media executor, the former American opera singer Martin LAURENT, called on his “Meme Warriors” to make sure the HANDELSBLATT reporters understand how “much they failed“. It wasn’t the first time that dissenters had been attacked by the founding team.
The two founding teams of ENVION spend a lot of money on their legal disputes and media battles. Money they have received from ICO investors and should be used to develop the business.
In any case, disappointed ICO investors can feel entertained. Directed by Martin LAURENT, this is a spectacle that can certainly compete with American business crime thrillers in terms of dramaturgy and performance. Who knows, perhaps the “Case ENVION” will also be discovered by Netflix or Amazon in the near future. There would be enough dramatic elements.
Media people are having an argument over ENVION
In addition, media skirmishes have now broken out around ENVION. On Twitter, the editors-in-chief of HANDELSBLATT and CAPITAL got into their hair over the question of who reported first and exclusively (or not) on ENVION’s 100 million scandal.
Schöne neue Medienwelt: Capital verkauft am Donnerstag eine Geschichte als exklusiv, die vor drei Tagen im #Handelsblatt erschien. https://t.co/83sOwHaGyvhttps://t.co/HjvTLK5HtM
bin gespannt! @capitalMagazin @wirminghaus @HorstButtlar— Sönke Iwersen (@soenke_iwersen) August 22, 2018
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However, the two articles have quite different tones. While HANDELSBLATT is very critical of both founding teams around Michael LUCKOW and Matthias WOESTMANN, the article in CAPITAL tends to support the side of Michael LUCKOW and his TRADO GmbH, i.e. the story of the “robbery of ENVION AG” by WOESTMANN, VAN AUBEL and Freund. A Martin LAURENT simply has to call his “meme warriors” to the media battle, doesn’t he?
Despite the spectacle, the facts will not change. And the main factor in the case of ENVION is that investors are losing their money or their money is currently being used for other purposes.
I wonder how much the white collar crime ring pays you. Get your facts clear, you don’t speak for us investors. Go ahead and cover the factual based court ruling if you want to do real journalism.
Thx for your critical comment. We are not paid by anybody and we are not siding with anybody except investors. We simply analyzed the lawsuit by comparing its allegations with known facts and research results. And we do think that this lawsuit is an important element in the Envion case regardless of its merits.
Regarding the media coverage we gave our impression on what we experienced and saw. You don’t have to agree on that but this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are paid by white collar crime people.
If you are not paid by a white collar crime ring – why do you constantly mix up facts? The story from the founders got proven right by court in Berlin. Capital is the first magazine that wrote a fact based article on the court ruling – you call it PR. This is nothing but manipulation – and destroys your credibility.
Hi Felix, thx for the answer. Let me make a few things clear. The term “litigation PR” typically covers all press activity (including the coverage of journalists) around a litigation case and is by no means an illegitimate or even dodgy activity. Furthermore, it’s obviuos from the many press releases, blog postings and social media postings that both parties are actively working with litigation PR which is their right. Fine for us.
Hence, using the term litigation PR doesn’t have a negative connotation to us. We have been very careful in our reporting on Envion so far and only work on facts.
Regarding the preliminary court order in Berlin we have made any statement in any direction because we simply don’t have the facts.
If you would care for truth you’ve would dive deeper into the court case. It is factional proven that Woestmann made up the entire “extra Token story”. He even admitted that in his own blog posts. Some times he write stories about 20m Token, some times about 40m Token, some times he admits that there was a pre-ico, and then he even admits to be a time traveler.
Calling the first factional based article “tends to support” is laughable. There is a reason why the court case was a blazing victory for the founders – they can prove everything deeply in every detail. And the entire BIG report is build on faked data to frame the founders.
Handelsblatt did a bad job and protects a white collar crime ring – calling the founders “nerds”. And leave one or two half sentences about the court case.
If you would read all blog posts from MW you would see that data does not match up. FinTelegram plays a blame game – and it looks like that there is more going on between the white collar crime ring and your “news”.
This is biased af… the anti-founders people are the only ones trying to make a spectacle because they want thier original investment back now that the whole crypto market is down.
There are no “meme warriors”, this was a joke, pointing out how bad the Handlesplat reporting was.
Laurent tells us what he is allowed, when he is allowed. Most of the actual investors are just waiting patiently.
No one has lost thier money, unless they sold, and the money (as far as we know) is not being used for other purposes.
Thank you for your comment. If the call for “Meme Warriors” in a public channel because of the reporting by a highly recognized business media was a joke, it was a rude joke, one that could easily been mistaken for a threat in times like these. I, personally, think that the founder team has to finally recognize that they are representing a public company (project) and will thus be held responsible for all public statements. This was true at the time of the ICO and this is true now.
I honestly respect your guys’ loyalty which undoubtedly speaks for the founders. Undisputable fact, however, is, that many other people feel differently about the case and not onle those Woestmann’s & friends (which are called out “white criminals”). And there are ongoing lawsuits, regulatory investigations, and criminal investigations. That said, it must be allowed to report critically on both founder teams without being called out friends of the “white criminals”.
We are aware of at least a dozens investors that feel damaged and mislead.
Don’t you understand that innocent people get framed for a crime that never happened? That the white collar crime ring around Woestmann and van Aubel went to a company that does AML reports for FBI and CIA and feed them with false data? That Woestmann himself called the founders “white collar crime” first in a Handelsblatt article? Don’t you care that the Landgericht Berlin clearly states in their judgement that their are no illegal tokens?!
At one point you stopped looking at a white collar crime ring, that was involved in major things. (IBG, Balda, Q-Cells,…) Their is even a 30 minutes long report on MDR on the IBG case – and the criminals used the same company network… Sycamore GmbH was used to steal millions of tax payers money.
At some point FinTelegram startet to produce questionable content, put out “near to fake news” material.
Did you even read the “Capital” article, or do you just write about different angles without throwing an eye on source material?
Felix
The Founders are not so innocent as you make them out to be. The kept quiet about a major internal problem in Envion that paralysed the project from proceeding for 4 months. In addition, they continued to release misleading information to the public. During this time, EVN tokens where being publicly traded on various exchanges.
Worst of all, the Founders were secretly selling their (free-issued) tokens to investors like me. Drspite coomunication on a number of times that the Founders tokens were locked for a period of 6 months.
As the investors did not have access to the same information, it is a clear case of insider trading.
Laurent & Micheal’s attempt to explain the selling of the Founder tokens were laughable and an insult to the intelligence of the investors.
I believe that the Founders are going to have to defend their illegal actions in a court in the very near future.
Oh mate, dont read telegram channels if you find memes offensive!
Better yet, don’t read the “Sue Envion” channel frequented by your buddy Szilard. This channel has a subscriber group almost an order of magnitude less than the founders channel, so thankfully not the predominant view, but the memes and comments are overwhelmingly homophobic, misogynistic, and revolve around graphic descriptions of, threats, and calls for the violent rape of, various founders and team members. It is quite disturbing and potentially criminal, but sure, a pg photoshopped cartoon meme is offensive…
“At least a dozens investors”, however many that is, seems pretty minimal out of 30k. If you are actually attempting to report this issue in a balanced manner, perhaps try sampling more widely?
Thanks, Yelena for your comment and thanks for pointing to the Telegram channel “Sue Envion”, we did not know it: A lot of very disappointed investors – we understand the investors´high frustration and each day passing the number of disappointed investors will increase.
The supposed “joke” was taken serious, eg by Felix G attacking the Handelsblatt journalist with a meme on Twitter. Obviously not a joke.
Now this same Felix G writes here without any arguments. Laurent’s instigating fanboys and misleading public has been tolerated too long.
Most investors want their money back of this disastrous ICO, period.
It looks like some people try to manipulate the poll. In only a few minutes a massive spike of votes – from 9 to 24 people – occured. Boooh!
Hey Felix, it’s me. Your father. Please do me a favor a take your pills. Your friend Laurent also went home, so you have nothing to look for anymore on the streets after sunset.
Unfortunately yet again Laurent MARTIN has tried to manipulate investors and public opinion, by manipulating this poll.
See proof at https://twitter.com/envionwatch/status/1033896971637903360?s=21