Prime Forest Group Schweiz/Panama ist eines der bekanntesten Unternehmen im Bereich Teakholz/Pflanzungen-Beteiligungen (3000-5000 Beteiligungen verkauft).Riesige Investitionen in Panama und früher auch in Costa Rica.
http://www.janmedia.de/REF/mini/geschaeft.htmIm heute erhaltenen "Expat-Investor".....www.expatinvestor.com steht ein "dramatischer" Beitrag , dass es sich bei diesem Unternehmen um ein betrügerisches Sammelbecken von u.a.panamesischen Politikern handeln soll!Wertloses Land und falsche Bepflanzungen an tausende von gutgläubigen Anlegern verkauft.
Warum den Beitrag hier?Nun irgendwo in meiner Beschäftigung mit Paraguay habe ich ein Angebot mit einer "Baum-Beteiligung" von einem Deutschen in Paraguay erhalten.Wie man sieht.....VORSICHT ist angebracht.....selbst bei anscheinend etablierten Unternehmungen in diesem Bereich ist man nicht vor vollständigem Vermögensverlust bewahrt!Hier der Expat -Text (leider nur auf Englisch......aber......):
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News and Views for October 2006
Seeing the wood for trees
Financial investigator Tony Hetherington exposes a forestry scam.
It takes a long time to build up a good name, and far less time to see it damaged or lost. And since con artists rarely have a good name of their own, they frequently rely on links - real or fictional - to reputable organisations and individuals in order to dress up their own public image and attract business.
Prime Forestry is a classic example. Operating from telephone sales offices in Dublin and Switzerland, the company has spent the past few years soliciting investment in teak trees, with the claim that these would yield annual returns of 14 per cent. The trees are located on a plantation in Panama, and the scheme attracted an impressive range of backers. The Forest Stewardship Council, an international ecological group, gave its seal of approval. Yale University and the prestigious Smithsonian Institute joined Prime Forestry in an ecology project. And the firm even received an official visit last February from Panama’s President Martin Torrijos, who praised the scheme and posed for publicity pictures. All of this helped Prime Forestry attract £26 million from 3,000 investors around the world. But then the questions began, and the answers have been far from pleasant. The Smithsonian and Yale University denied having any links at all to Prime Forestry, let alone co-operating with it in a joint project.
The Forest Stewardship Council revealed that after it initially approved the plantation scheme, it had often been unhappy about the way it operated, and it objected to the use of its name for marketing purposes. Belatedly, it withdrew its support. But, surprisingly, the backing of President Torrijos and his colleagues was genuine. In fact, it went far beyond a one-off personal appearance. Timber industry experts in Panama had expressed serious doubts about Prime Forestry’s advertising claims. Its plantation was in an area of poor soil and too much rain, making high quality production impossible, they said. But the picture became clearer when a retired boss of Panama’s environmental authority dropped in at Prime Forestry’s offices and found four of the government’s own forestry officials working there part time! They included a senior figure who had actually licensed the company to clear land of existing trees and plant its teak saplings. And the country’s agriculture minister turned out to have a part time role, as a director of Prime Forestry’s local subsidiary. Of course, none of this necessarily meant the scheme would not succeed. But sadly for investors, it hasn’t. For Swiss authorities have closed the parent company after finding that it was headed by Kurt Meier, a prominent figure in a 1980s worldwide stockbroking scandal.
Then, Meier was right-hand man to Tommy Quinn, a Mafia associate from Brooklyn who controlled a chain of corrupt broking firms that sold dud stocks and is estimated to have raked in over £1 billion before Quinn was arrested in France in 1988 and jailed for four years. Anxious Swiss investigators are now probing to see whether Quinn is also involved in Prime Forestry. All of which leads to the conclusion that it is not just investors who need to do their due diligence before parting with their cash. Anyone whose name is likely to be exploited in marketing investment schemes should also beware. Investors who lose money do so privately. The loss of a good name is more difficult to get over.
Readers are invited to contact Tony Hetherington via the editor at
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