Balsam AG

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The company Balsam AG in Steinhagen near Bielefeld in Westphalia stands for one of the most serious cases of white-collar crime in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany . Like the Schneider affair, it was exposed in 1994.

The enterprise

Balsam AG was founded in 1965 by Friedel Balsam. Balsam started out as an entrepreneur with borrowed capital of 7,000 DM . In the period that followed, a flourishing medium-sized company emerged which, with over 1000 employees, generated sales in the three-digit million range and became the world's largest manufacturer of sports floors. Balsam AG concentrated on equipping stadiums, tennis courts, gyms and running courses with floors and artificial turf. The company was represented at the Olympic Games and World Championships . The success finally culminated in world market leadership in the mid-1980s. This success resulted from an aggressive dumping price policy feared by the competition. Competitors in the sector were gradually bought up or pushed out of the market.

The scam and how it was done

Balsam AG bought two dozen competitors within ten years. The competitor's acquisitions were outside of any proper financial control. As a result, Friedel Balsam - according to his own statements in the process - "completely lost sight of" his own costs. The business figures were negative and there were gaps in the company's budget. Balsam AG neglected both the profitability of acquisitions and its own liquidity. The reason was the one-sided economic focus on sales growth and company size. Comparisons were made with the entrepreneurial machinations of Horst-Dieter Esch with his IBH empire , which went bankrupt in 1984 .

This one-sided focus prompted the Balsam accountant Klaus-Detlev Schlienkamp, ​​in consultation with Friedel Balsam, to use tricks to disguise this. He built it on his contacts with the finance service Procedo Society for export factoring D. Klindworth mbH (short: Procedo ) in Wiesbaden , the specialty that factoring was. The principle of factoring is simple: the financial service provider grants a company a loan as soon as it expects a payment, which is similar to an advance . The loan is repaid to the financial service provider as soon as the claim is paid off. It was so-called fake factoring , because the receivables were not sold to Procedo , the del credere risk thus remained with Balsam AG, which turned out to be fatal. After initially correct processing in accordance with the provisions, Schlienkamp expanded the possibilities of a faster incoming payment to the effect that he stated excessive invoice amounts at Procedo , which then increased the credit volume. This was necessary from the mid-1980s to plug Balsam's ever-growing financial holes. The invoice amounts became more and more unrealistic, after all, invoices were completely forged instead of simply increased. The system had thus become a pyramid scheme . In the phase in which the fraud was uncovered, there were real order books of 40 million DM against liabilities of the order of 1.8 billion DM. In mid-June 1994, Balsam AG therefore filed for bankruptcy . The Procedo was also economically in the end and initiated a judicial settlement process with subsequent sale to the Rewe group one. Nevertheless, Schlienkamp had tried to compensate Balsam AG's losses in some way by trading currency options , which actually meant that the damage to the banks could be reduced.

Effects

Balsam AG had borrowed money from a total of 50 lenders, who had to write off their commitments almost completely. In contrast to the Jürgen Schneider affair , there was no sustainable bankruptcy estate in the form of real estate or time deposit accounts that could have reduced the damage to the banks. Rather, it was traded with “air”. In addition, only Deutsche Bank and what was then Dresdner Bank participated in the remaining bankruptcy assets because they had agreed global assignments in their favor.

process

The public prosecutor's office conducted investigations into the suspicion of credit fraud , forgery of documents and tax evasion and charged the accused with an 875 page indictment before the Bielefeld district court . It took almost 200 days of trial before the trial was ready for judgment after three years. Two board members of Balsam AG received fines of 100,000 DM. Two Procedo managers received prison sentences of 21 and 24 months. Friedel Balsam was sentenced to eight years in prison, and Schlienkamp, ​​the only accused to have confessed , was sentenced to ten years in absentia on September 20, 1999 after 195 days of hearing. He escaped on November 10, 1998 and was caught in the Philippines on March 28, 2000.

Remarkable

  • The main suspect in the affair, Schlienkamp, ​​who was released on custody during his pre- trial detention , explained in a letter to the judge his impending suicide , whereupon there was no trace of him. In March 2000, he was tracked down by targeted investigators in the Philippines . Despite marrying a Filipino woman, he was extradited from there.
  • A former employee of Balsam AG filed a criminal complaint against Balsam AG at the end of 1992 . In the absence of any initial suspicion , the Bielefeld public prosecutor's office did not investigate the allegation. After the same applicant repeated the criminal complaint in autumn 1993, the responsible criminal police took action, whereby the responsible public prosecutor Jost Schmiedeskamp again failed to act. It was later alleged that Schmiedeskamp's wife and Balsam's partner had personal relationships. A state liability suit for delaying the investigation was dismissed.
  • The detective chief inspector K.-H., who was entrusted with the investigation through the second criminal complaint against the company. Wallmeier targeted Balsam AG and also noted the omissions of the public prosecutor's office. He ultimately exposed the fraud case, even sacrificing vacation days for his research.
  • The scandal surrounding Balsam AG was symptomatic of a majority of cases in the 1990s that revealed clear misconduct by supervisory boards towards company management boards . The weak point was that there was completely inadequate control, even though the company was in an efficient state . Suggestions for improvement from the literature of economics and law were addressed in particular to the supervisory boards and auditors . In accordance with Section 124 (3 ) AktG , auditors were to be appointed by the Supervisory Board instead of the Management Board. The reporting obligations to the Supervisory Board have been significantly expanded.
  • The bankruptcy proceedings over the assets of Balsam AG were opened in 2009 and terminated in 2014. Claims amounting to 1.98 billion DM were offset by company assets of around 10 million DM.

See also

literature

  • Klaus Schmeh: The 55 Biggest Flops in Economic History Frankfurt / Vienna, Redline Economy, Ueberreuter, ISBN 3-8323-0864-4
  • Klaus Ott: The farewell letter [Klaus Schlienkamp], Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 18, 2020, p. 10

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schmeh, Everyone slept soundly , Der Balsam-Krimi, p. 96
  2. ↑ Balsam billion bankruptcy shakes the financial world in stern.de ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 25, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stern.de
  3. ↑ Wirtschaftswoche 24/1994
  4. ↑ Balsam AG: A windy chief financial officer fooled banks and insurance companies , tricked out ice cold, by Wolfgang Köhler
  5. ↑ Peter Lang, The German Corporate Governance Code, p. 91
  6. ↑ Volker H. Peemöller, Stefan Hofmann, Accounting Scandals : Offenses and Countermeasures
  7. ↑ "Miraculous Money Multiplication", Der Spiegel 17/1996
  8. ↑ Spiegel from June 13, 1994: affairs, hot air, another banking scandal: managers of Balsam AG in Steinhagen swindled billions in loans.
  9. ↑ Dr. Jürgen Schneider, Success Factors in Corporate Monitoring, p. 8 (online books)
  10. ↑ The company boss receives eight years imprisonment. In: tagesspiegel.de . September 20, 1999, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Millions of fraudsters : Balsam CFO arrested. In: Spiegel Online . March 28, 2000, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  12. ↑ The Balsam case. Or: About the indispensability of committed researchers
  13. ↑ a b Spiegel from September 19, 1994: Only for filing
  14. ^ Judgment of the Düsseldorf Regional Court of January 2, 1995 and decision of the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court of August 7, 1995 - 18 W 5/95 NJW 1996, 530 ( online )
  15. ^ Forster, 1995, I.
  16. ↑ Peter Lang, The German Corporate Governance Code, p. 92
  17. ↑ Bankruptcy proceedings over the assets of the former sports floor manufacturer canceled on nw-news.de, accessed on May 2, 2014