Assets at Thomas Middelhoff ensured: Middelhoff loses in court – Tagesspiegel

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An attempt was worth it. Before Thomas Middelhoff logged private bankruptcy, the former top manager can be transferred much of his wealth to his family. Now a court has the liquidator authorized to retrieve the money.

104 million euros: So much call for the creditors of the former Bertelsmann and Arcandor CEO Thomas Middelhoff. This seems, according to reports from the Süddeutsche Zeitung and WDR but to have arrangements before his personal bankruptcy. By 2011, Middelhoff have transferred a property in Bielefeld to a company whose shareholders are mainly his wife Cornelia and her five children. Other assets in the form of fund units, shares and a fixed deposit account should also have been moved by his lawyer Hartmut Fromm, to protect it from the access of the insolvency administrator. Overall, said to have been illegal, “saved” before 31.03.2015, the date of the personal bankruptcy so values ​​of 90 million. Thomas Middelhoff is currently now on the loose – bail was 900,000 euros.

“Not a cent” more found only hid millions

Now the District Court Bielefeld on 13 April to Middelhoff insolvency administrator Thorsten Fuest authorized to make all transmissions reversed. Fuest to secure house and stock shares for the creditors and so repay parts of million of debt. Most recently, the insolvency administrator had complained that he had “no cents” found more in Middelhoff to satisfy the 50 creditors. Main creditors are the private bank Sal. Oppenheim, the Sparkasse Cologne / Bonn and the management consultant Roland Berger. Moreover Middelhoff owes the Land Nordrhein-Westfalen or taxes in the millions.

Middelhoff recorded before his insolvency alone and with his wife eight closed-end funds on the private bank Sal. Oppenheim and the Troisdorf companies and Josef Esch. They served primarily tax savings for the enormous wealth Thomas Middelhoff’s. Lange, however, the other fund shareholders as Madeleine Schickedanz or the shoe dynasty Deichmann kept quiet, although the Middelhoff’s long gone nachkamen its financial obligations arising from the investments.

Middelhoff excluded from six companies

Now the other investors have agreed with six of the Fund on that Middelhoff’s excluded from the companies. They used for a passage of the treaty, which allows to remove shareholders who have applied for personal bankruptcy. In the case Middelhoff a neutral expert now has to evaluate how much the shares are worth and what if the couple Middelhoff can still enforce any claims.

Resistance also comes from Middelhoff himself. His lawyers maintain the exclusions for ineffective and argue that those responsible for the Oppenheim-Esch Group were biased in the resolution of the shareholders’ meeting because Middelhoff since 2012 in the dispute with the group is.