10-year-old teak plantation owned by the company listed in Austria © THI
This business model was to establish teak plantations in Costa Rica with money collected in the stock market. But already the evaluation of the area had been "completely wrong". Instead of 89 million it should have been only 13 million. One of the brokers involved has now admitted that it was part of his duties to inform the farmers selling the land that the amounts actually paid would be lower than those stated in the purchase agreement. The difference has disappeared. That would constitute a direct impairment to the company in favor of unknown persons.
This was followed by years of false reports about the tree stock. Forest engineers from Austria and Costa Rica are said to have registered some road areas and protected forest as planted stands with excessive stocking densities. For years, a picture had been cultivated that "had nothing to do with reality", according to Fraundorfer. Only at the end of last year it was announced that THI actually possesses only 660,000 trees in Costa Rica rather than the 1.3 million specified.
Last Wednesday, the auditors of PwC have now withdrawn the audit report of the 2013 balance sheet. The reason: The evaluation of the teak plantations "was based on faulty assumptions." When acquiring the land there had been a "non-transparent and possibly fraudulent financial management".
