Envion was a German/Swiss blockchain venture that created a security token that would pay dividends for crypto mining. The company’s claim to global awareness was its promise to bring clean energy to the computers that mine cryptocurrency. It aimed to deliver smart, scalable off-grid solutions to maximize the value of renewable and traditional energy worldwide. The project started to gain traction following partnership announcements with German business people and politicians as well as Fraunhofer, the largest institute for solar research and smart grids in Europe. In fact, Envion was also certified to be compliant with both Swiss and American laws concerning ICOs.
It was one of the biggest ICOs of 2018. As it turned out, a few months after the ICO rumors started about the fallout between the CEO of Envion, Matt Woestmann, and the founders, and investors started to lose faith in the company because of this ongoing dispute. According to a spokesman for the founders, Laurent Martin, problems began to arise even before the ICO started last year, with Woestmann being the root of the problem. Woestmann, who is not part of the founding team, allegedly refused to relinquish his hold on the majority of the company’s shares after the founders gave him temporary control of those shares. He then proceeded to dilute the shares of the other owners by means of a capital injection from a company owned by him, his wife, and his lawyer. This gave him full control over the raised funds from the ICO. It has been dubbed the first analogical ICO hack. The process went into the Swiss court-of-law, which deemed the capital injection illegal, therefore freezing all the company's assets.
During all of this process information has been pretty scarce, with the original founders claiming they were doing everything to avoid insolvency and protect the investors, through their company Trado, Gmbh. I tended to believe this was indeed true, but as much as I would like to believe on the amazing idea they were selling, it seems it was all a big scam from the beginning.
In December 2018 the Swiss Cantonal Court of Zug has dissolved envion AG and ordered its liquidation. At the end the "analogue hacker" got what he wanted, insolvency, although maybe not exactly as he intended (it is not clear yet how it will all be processed).
How to get (part of) your money back
If you are here, probably you have invested in this company like I did. No shame in that, if you were wise enough to not invest what you could not afford to loose (the golden rule in crypto-investing). So, what's next? You will have to make a claim in order identify yourself as a creditor of the company. If you do not do this you will not be able to be refunded.
I have been involved in similar processes in "real-world" banking. It is tedious, annoying, and time-consuming. It is also very hard to keep up with the developments and the official procedures that are necessary. Furthermore, in this case, it will help to know how to speak (or read at least) the german language.
You don't have to pay anyone to file a claim. However, if you were a big investor, then lawyer up as soon as you can. My advice to the general small-medium investor has be to join an organization that gathers claims from many investors to produce what is called a collective claim (the same process I went through in the "real-world" investment process). This way you can be sure that you will have a team of lawyers following up on the case closely, fighting for your (and many others) rights. Of course, you will incur a fee but IMHO better to see something back than nothing.
That said, my approach is to join the collective claim from EFRI. Again, this is my approach, and I am in no way affiliated with EFRI. I advise you to do the same and hopefully recover some of your investment.
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