Icon: enlarge
Willi Balz in the Stuttgart district court
Photo:
Marijan Murat / dpa
Company founder Willi Balz was sentenced to four years and six months in prison in the criminal proceedings surrounding the Windreich bankruptcy.
The Stuttgart Regional Court saw it as proven that Balz was guilty of deliberate bankruptcy delay, fraud, breach of trust, embezzling embezzlement and insider trading.
However, the judgment is not yet final.
Windreich, a company based in the Esslingen district, had specialized in wind turbines on land and at sea and filed for bankruptcy in September 2013.
Just months earlier, Windreich had appointed TV presenter Sabine Christiansen to the supervisory board in a publicly effective manner.
A short time later, however, the public prosecutor opened an investigation and ransacked the company.
Originally there were eight defendants
In the process, the 60-year-old wind farm developer had rejected allegations of fraud.
He was always liquid, the raid ultimately led to bankruptcy.
"I gave my all," said Balz in 2013 when he filed for bankruptcy and left the company.
The court did not follow this line of argument and found that the group of companies had been insolvent much earlier.
Other missteps by courtship were added, said the presiding judge Alexander Stuckert.
Windreich had raised a three-digit million amount from investors, but the bonds crashed and lost massively in value.
Originally eight people were charged in the process, including the former Baden-Württemberg Minister of Economic Affairs Walter Döring (FDP), who was on the company's board of directors.
The proceedings started in August 2019 against everyone except courtship were discontinued over time.
Balz was once considered a pioneer for wind turbines to generate electricity at sea.
In terms of the sentence, the court was only slightly below the demands of the public prosecutor, who had requested five years and three months imprisonment for courtship.
In their plea, however, the defense had demanded an acquittal.
Icon: The mirror
apr / dpa
