Bad suspicion: are cheap suppliers throwing out customers to cash in on the stock market?
Created: 01/22/2022, 11:27 am
Many low-cost electricity providers had to terminate their contracts.
There is a bad suspicion in the industry.
(Iconic image) © Patrick Pleul/dpa
Due to rising inflation, many low-cost suppliers had to stop supplying electricity or gas.
Allegations against the suppliers are now being made.
Munich - The prices for food and energy continue to rise: This not only has consequences for households, but also for their energy suppliers.
Due to high inflation, many low-cost suppliers had to stop their electricity and gas supplies at short notice.
Around 40 companies nationwide announced that they would no longer supply electricity.
Allegations against the energy discounters are now being made: do they sell their energy quotas on the stock exchange?
Electricity providers terminate contracts: do they sell electricity on the exchange?
In December 2021, cheap energy suppliers such as Gas.de or Stromio declared on their websites that they could no longer supply their customers "due to the historically unique price development".
The business model of these suppliers, to procure energy quickly and cheaply, is no longer economical due to the rising prices.
But the suppliers are not bankrupt: In order to prevent bankruptcy, they stopped supplying electricity and gas instead, as
Focus
and the ZDF magazine
learned
head-
on when asked.
But what then became of the electricity and gas quotas that the cheap suppliers still have available?
There is speculation in the industry that the discounters are selling electricity or gas on the energy exchange - for high prices.
But this rumor is not so easy to clear up: As the Leipzig electricity exchange explained to
Focus
, trading in electricity takes place anonymously "to ensure equal treatment of all trading participants".
Energy supplier EON criticizes cheap suppliers: bankruptcy fraud?
As a spokesman for the energy supplier EON
told
Focus
,
he shares this view: "It seems reasonable to think that this amount of electricity will be sold on the stock exchange."
fall victim.
The figures also reinforce this impression: According to reports from
Der Spiegel
, Stromio and Gas.de, both of which belong to entrepreneur Ömer Varol, together generated an operating profit of 111 million euros in 2019 - with sales of 1.1 billion euros and just 36 employees .
Chaos on the energy market: Federal government is examining new rules
Leonhard Birnbaum was angry about the behavior of the electricity discounters. "They gave up the customers to the basic suppliers, who are now ensuring the delivery, and stole their responsibility," he told the
German Press Agency
. In addition, some of the short-term terminations of electricity contracts are illegal, as Consumer Protection Minister Steffi Lemke confirmed to the
dpa
.
Many customers of the cheap electricity providers now have to be accepted by the basic suppliers - for sometimes high new customer amounts.
The federal government now wants to examine new rules for the energy market.
"We will not allow it to be dumped on consumers if cheap electricity providers go bankrupt or terminate contracts en masse," Lemke told
dpa
.
(sf/ dpa)
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