Heros group of companies

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Heros group of companies
legal form
founding 1978
resolution 2006
Reason for dissolution insolvency
Seat Hanover , Germany
Number of employees 4,600
Branch Money transport

The Heros group of companies , based in Hanover, was the market leader in the money transport industry in Germany. At the beginning of 2006 it became known that the company's managers had embezzled around 270 million euros.

Companies

The group of companies was founded in 1978 and employed around 4,600 people. Before the bankruptcy on February 20, 2006, around 50% of all cash transports in Germany were carried out by the Heros Group.

The group of companies was managed by Heros Verwaltungs GmbH . The group included over 27 subsidiaries, including Heros Transport GmbH , Heros Wertelogistik GmbH , Heros Security , Security Service Werttransport Mannheim GmbH , Nordcash Geldverarbeitung GmbH , Heros Sicherheitsdienste GmbH , Securitas Wertdienste Holding , ABUCicherungstechnik GmbH and Finanz-Data GmbH .

The considerable growth of the Heros Group was based primarily on the takeover of competitors. The most spectacular takeover, that of the German Securitas Cash Handling, took place on November 28, 2005.

Fraud scandal

Abandoned Heros branch in Viersen

On February 20, 2006, the company filed for insolvency proceedings for 27 subsidiaries after allegations of fraud became known. Company executives are around 540 million euros embezzled or misappropriated have. The bankruptcy proceedings were opened on April 28, 2006. For insolvency administrator Manuel Sack was named the previously already interim receiver was.

Three employees ( CEO Northern cash Reimer Weingertner, authorized North Cash Manfred Diel and managing partner Karl-Heinz Weis) in a leading position to sit in detention . The main accused, Karl-Heinz Weis , had his lawyer announced that he would make a confession. Weis had already toyed with the idea of ​​filing a voluntary report - but the police raid came before him. There is also a confession from the manager Manfred Diel . Diel, who owns a hotel in the Bulgarian winter resort of Bansko , admitted to the prosecutor that he had withdrawn around 10 million euros in cash for personal use. Diel, who comes from Frechen near Cologne , is an honorary citizen of Bansko.

Apparently a kind of " pyramid scheme " was being operated, as the investigating public prosecutor called it. Heros diverted customer money that had to be counted, sorted and transported. Short-term investments are said to have been made - with considerable interest gains. The resulting holes were then filled with customer money from the following days. The diverted money is said to have been put into private pockets on the one hand and used to finance business operations on the other.

It is doubtful whether the business would have been economically viable without the misappropriation of customer funds, as Heros offered cash transport and money processing services up to 50% cheaper than its competitors, which already worked with low margins, in order to further increase sales and to feed the pyramid scheme, while still investing heavily in the vehicle fleet and infrastructure.

The rapid expansion was apparently necessary to keep the "carousel fraud" going. The "Heros system" collapsed at the latest when major customers with a considerable daily accumulation of cash such as Schlecker or Lidl canceled their contracts because of irregularities that were recognized.

A final “lifeline” for the “Heros system” was found in the takeover of the second largest cash handling company in Germany at the time, the Securitas Cash Handling Division, a subsidiary of the Swedish Securitas AB . Among other things, the major customer Deutsche Bank was transferred from the subsidiary Securitas to Heros, while other major customers canceled their orders a few weeks later. The night after the signing of the purchase agreement, Heros employees drove up to the largest Securitas locations with extensive customer funds in Germany in order to use the money from Securitas customers to plug the holes in their own inventory and to appease customers who had become suspicious . The IT department, as the only cross-company area that threatened to see through the activities in all its breadth, was forced to sign employment contracts with the Heros subsidiary Nordcash by threatening to lay off. Employees who were not taken on fled to a hastily newly founded works council.

It later became known that Heros had given the Lower Saxony CDU dubious donations. A few days before the state elections in Lower Saxony on February 2, 2003, € 20,000 went to the CDU regional association within a few days. In July 2009 the Higher Regional Court of Celle decided that this donation had to be repaid, as it was made less than 4 years before the opening of the bankruptcy proceedings (2006). Der Spiegel: "Evidence suggests that the company has broken up the donation into four tranches of 5000 euros each in order to avoid publication in the statement of accounts for the Bundestag administration. ... The owner of the various donor companies was the same person: the hero -Founder Karl-Heinz Weis ... If the denomination can be proven, the Christian Democrats might have to pay an additional 60,000 euros to the Bundestag as a fine. ... the (Lower Saxony) CDU rejects the accusation of manipulation ... "

The victims include Aldi , Rewe , Citibank , McDonald’s , but also many smaller companies. It is unclear whether the insurance companies will cover the damage. Numerous lawsuits against the insurance company are now pending.

Around half of the company's 1,868 vehicles are leased, and Weis’s property in Málaga only accounts for a small amount of the damage.

On May 1, 2006, the US subsidiary MatlinPatterson took over the entire Heros group and has been running it since then under the name SecurLog . The investors took over 3,000 of the previously almost 4,600 employees and relocated the headquarters to Securitas in Düsseldorf . SecurLog is still the largest transport company in Germany and has now taken over the Cologne-based money transport company WIS. On December 30, 2011, SecurLog was taken over by Prosegur .

The real scam

Heros collected around 500 million euros in cash every working day in the retail stores of his customers in order to deposit them with the Bundesbank on the same day - technical term "money disposal". The money earned no interest until it was in the bank. Heros began not to pay partial amounts to the Bundesbank on the same day, but (initially) one day later and excused this with technical deficiencies such as malfunctions in the automatic money counting centers. In return, the customers were offered interest for the one day in order to reassure them. Creditor representative Hans-Gerd Jauch criticized the carelessness of the Heros customers. Money that arrives at the Bundesbank even just one day later than it was collected from the customer would not only be delayed when viewed carefully, but possibly stolen. So, in order not to attract attention because of the theft, Heros had developed a system to “apologize for one day at a time” for the permanently unavailable shortfall “in turn” every day to another customer. For example, the perpetrators initially withdrew 10 million euros from the above-mentioned 500 million euros in cash collected daily for private purposes. By simultaneously apologizing for this shortfall "for only one day as late" on a daily basis and this according to plan to changing customers every day, it was not noticed that the amount was completely gone.

If the perpetrators had limited themselves to a withdrawal of 50 million euros and reported every ten days to the same customer as "delayed by one day" with 500 million euros per day, according to Jauch, they would have died rich. In fact, the perpetrators withdrew more and more money, also to finance deficits, but also to a large extent for their private benefit. When around half of the daily money supply had disappeared in the end, the customer's attention threshold was finally exceeded. Correctly, they should not have accepted a “late report” in a single case because of the smallest amount, without investigating the causes and checking whether the late amounts were still in circulation at Heros or had instead completely disappeared. Heros succeeded in embezzling considerable amounts because, in the end, individual customers accepted delays of up to a week in exchange for interest payment, without creating suspicion.

Legal proceedings

On September 19, 2006, the Hanover Public Prosecutor's Office brought charges of embezzlement of 250 million euros against four men. The process began in the same year before the economic Criminal Chamber of the Landgericht Hildesheim . In May 2007 the three defendants were sentenced to between six and a half and ten years in prison.

On February 13, 2007, a former employee of a subsidiary was sentenced to six years in prison by the Mönchengladbach Regional Court for extorting her boss and embezzlement.

On August 31, 2007, two authorized signatories were sentenced to three and three years and nine months, respectively, for embezzlement .

In August 2008, the business premises of the Rewe group were examined by the Hanover public prosecutor's office on suspicion of corruption in business dealings with Heros.

On October 31, 2008, Karl-Heinz Weis was sentenced to a total of 11 years imprisonment for infidelity and personal enrichment in the millions. The co-accused division manager of the coin department was sentenced to five years in prison.

On April 14, 2010, Karl-Heinz Weis was officially deleted from the commercial register as managing director of Heros . This was announced in a publication by the Düsseldorf District Court on April 20, 2010 under the file number HRB 37070.

See also

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Beat Balzli, Andrea Brandt, Andreas Ulrich: The shine of money . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 2006 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Heros bankruptcy: Dubious donations burden the Lower Saxony CDU Spiegel Online, July 25, 2009, last accessed November 4, 2015.
  3. ^ Indictment against four Heros managers - trial started this year . Brinkmann & Partner AP / German Worldstream , September 19, 2006 (accessed December 4, 2008)
  4. ↑ Ten years imprisonment for Heros founder Weis . ( Memento from May 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) NDR , May 23, 2007 (accessed December 4, 2008)
  5. ↑ a b Chronology of the Heros scandal ( memento of August 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) at NDR , October 31, 2008 (accessed December 4, 2008)
  6. ↑ Rewe manager bribed by Heros? In: Tagesspiegel , August 21, 2008 (accessed December 4, 2008)
  7. ↑ Heros boss has to go to prison for eleven years . ( Memento of December 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) NDR October 31, 2008 (accessed December 4, 2008)