The Western High Court in Viborg, Denmark, has jailed Bent Nielsen – founder of tyre recycling company Genan – for six years after finding him guilty of fraud and mandate fraud of a particularly serious nature.
Bent Nielsen, Genan Founder, Jailed for Six Years for Fraud
Alongside Bent Nielsen, Bjarne Nielsen – an accountant with Deloitte who had been working for Bent Nielsen and Genan – was sentenced to three years in prison for contributing to fraud.
Genan had raised considerable capital from pension funds, and was ultimately acquired by one of the funds, PKA. PKA have since operated Genan with the view of recovering something from their lost investment.
PKA has expressed support for the prison sentences handed down to two men found guilty of fraud that cost the pension provider millions in writedowns.
PKA was forced to bail out Genan – which it holds as a private equity investment – in 2014 by upping its stake in the company to 97% from 45%, as it was on the verge of financial collapse. The DKK275bn (€36.9bn) pension provider invested DKK1bn in the firm, but was then believed to have suffered a loss of several hundred million on the company.
Bjarne Nielsen had signed documents that Bent Nielsen had used to prove he was paid back money he had loaned to Genan, even though this had not been the case, a PKA spokesman said.
The two convicted men are not related.
PKA said Genan had shown growth in both results and sales in its latest set of annual accounts. In its 2018 annual report, the firm said profit more than doubled from the previous year to DKK39m on sales of DKK341.2m.