We received some more information from ENVION investors which continue to bring light into this complicated case. Besides other activities, the journalist Matthias WOESTMANN used to be a publisher of investment letters. He allegedly is the co-founder of BOERSENMAN GMBH and the owner of the domain boersenman.de. According to a Wallstreet Online posting, WOESTMANN sold his investment letter to the Wallstreet Online group and is rather closely connected with them.
If you call up the address www.boersenman.de you will be directed to “Der Finanzinvestor”, a German investment letter who just recently promoted the Canadian Blockchain Intelligence Group (BIG). Actually, looking at “Der Finanzinvestor“, it’s evident that promoting BIG was their last public action. Two out of the four 2017-articles deal with BIG. It’s still a front page article. “Der Finanzinvestor” bullishly promoted BIG stock back in December 2017 in their investment letter.
This kind of investment letters usually recommends micro-cap shares for a purpose. More often than not, they are frontrunners with a simple business model – buy, write, sell, run!
The BIG Connections
Back in December 2017, BIG was just created via a Reverse Takeover (RTO) with an already listed company. On December 5, 2017, BIG’s stocks were listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE), an exchange that is known for its lack of transparency. It’s not an electronic clearing system like XETRA but a broker-based market making system with extreme volatilities and low liquidity in the listed shares. BIG stocks received a co-listing on the Frankfurt Exchange (Symbol: A2JSKG) on December 8, 2018, – the day of the bullish report of “Der Finanzinvestor”.
The really decisive point here is that BIG did a capital raise at the time of the listing at a price of CAD 0.75 and raised some CAD 19.5 million. They needed good press and support from investment letters like “Der Finanzinvestor”. In the aftermath of the successful capital increase, the BIG stock price went south consequently. Currently, the share price is around CAD 0.27 and at its low. Investors are deep in the red currently with their BIG stocks bought in the fund raising.
Looking at the stock’s chart, the timetable and the news releases we can assume that the stock price was friendly cared about at the time of the capital increase with the support of “Der Finanzinvestor”, among others.
WOESTMANN and the APATON Connections
“Der Finanzinvestor” is owned by APATON FINANCE GmbH. According to a German business directory, Matthias WOESTMANN is (was?) a director of this company. Additionally, WOESTMANN himself claimed to be a member of the supervisory board of APATON CAPITAL AG, the parent company of APATON FINANCE GmbH (confirmed by an archived website of APATON CAPITAL).
It may well be that this information is not up to date but whatever WOESTMANN’s role in the APATON group is, it’s clear that he is closely connected with them and APATON, in turn, is connected with BIG. The APATON group promoted the BIG stock several times over the last couple of months:
- Sept 21, 2017: BIG attended an APATON Blockchain meeting in Hannover;
- Dec 6, 2018: Finanzinvestor article – BIG gets listed on CSE (pre-announcement of the listing in Frankfurt)
- Dec 8, 2018: Finanzinvestor article – BIG has a successful exchange debut (“cheap stock, great opportunity”)
- April 23, 2018: APATON Facebook posting about a new BIG partnership
It’s probably no coincidence that WOESTMANN as director of ENVION mandated BIG to conduct the audit of ENVION’s ICO (read BIG’s press statement here) around the smart contract and the token distribution. Actually, this may constitute a conflict of interest because “Der Finanzinvestor”, connected to WOESTMANN, promoted the shares of BIG just a few weeks before. BIG’s respective press release, dated May 23, 2018, said that the 22-page report was already delivered to ENVION after finishing the investigation. Hence, we may assume that ENVION placed the order in March or April 2018.
The WALLSTREET ONLINE ICO ante portas
That said, it’s pretty clear that WOESTMANN is a stock market veteran and investment letter publisher. And he obviously tested the new waters of tokens and ICO with his ENVION engagement. Maybe or not the founders knew about WOESTMANN’s background when engaging with him.
Interestingly, the German WALLSTREET ONLINE announced yesterday their plan to conduct an ICO to finance the further expansion. Michael BULGRIN, director of WALLSTREET ONLINE AG, said in a press statement that they already established their ICO CONSULTING GmbH to participate in the crypto-business. The respective press release was done by APATON FINANCE GmbH, a company close to WOESTMANN. It’s a small planet, isn’t it?
We continue our investigation on activities around the ENVION case and would be more than happy to receive your information.
