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Of Nikos Chrysikopoulos
Twenty-eight months after that morning of Friday, May 4, 2018, when the content of the famous Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) report was released, exposing the inconceivable mechanism of falsification of Folli Follie’s financial data, Justice reached his appointment. the Koutsolioutsou family.
Commenting on Gabriel Grego’s QCM on social media a few hours after the pre-trial detention of Dimitris and George Koutsolioutsou: “Justice may be slow, but it eventually comes. Let this be a clear warning to all potential scammers out there. “.
HE decision of the investigator and prosecutor In order to sentence the detainees to preventive detention, for several years the director of the company, Dimitris and Tzortzi Koutsolioutsou, put the acclaimed case definitively on the path of accountability.
Responsibilities that from the first moment in which the biggest financial and business scandal of the last decades broke out in Greece, worth more than a billion euros, were rejected by the founder and CEO of Folli Follie for many years, who in his apologies Yesterday they tried to refute the serious accusation: fraud against the investing public, money laundering, market manipulation, criminal organization and counterfeiting.
Deception and tranquility
This, after all, they did from the first moment the tangle of the case began to unfold. A few hours after the publication of the QCM report that was the “lydia stone” of the scandal, at noon on May 4, 2018, Folli Follie, under the Koutsolioutsou administration, claimed that what QCM supported was non-existent, false, slanderous and misleading. that “it has already instructed its legal advisors to act in the manner they deem appropriate in order to defend, at civil and criminal level, the rights of the Company, its shareholders and the investing public in general.”
But also George Koutsolioutsos, general director of the group at the time, spoke of an “unjust attack” and “organized plan of speculators”, assuring shareholders, competent supervisory authorities, cooperating banks and employees of our Group, that I will receive everything immediately. the necessary measures to restore the truth and trust in the company that has had 35 years of successful course ”. So they said then …
Collapse
Despite the strong statements, such a thing did not happen, as is clear from the course of the case so far. The sequel was reminiscent of a horror train. FFG was asked to prove it had the millions in cash it depended on, a matter of a few hours for any business simply to submit copies of its bank statement (extrait).
The management of Folli Follie under the Koutsolioutsou family did not, on the contrary, as it seemed from the first moment, tried to save time by generously offering hollow guarantees that there is no problem and that everything will be solved soon.
It was later revealed that in the early days the Koutsolioutsou family, founders and key shareholders of the company, traveled in the early days of the scandal to Hong Kong, headquarters of the group’s Asian activities, where for several years they maintained, among other things, a luxury apartment in one of the city’s skyscrapers, close to the Fosun buildings. Even today, the purpose of this trip and the need for all family members to be in Hong Kong is unknown …
The “all around” Asia
Almost from the first moment of the revelations it seemed that the tip of the iceberg was in Asia. The focus of the investigation was the Asian activity of the FFG, so its control was said from the outset to be flawed.
The Asian part of the group refers to FF Group Sourcing Ltd (formerly Folli Follie Hong Kong Limited), a company based in Hong Kong.
The company’s balance sheet was signed by Thomas Ng – Chi Wa & Co, an unknown auditing firm. As members of the management, the financial statements were signed by Dimitris Koutsolioutsos (president of FFG), Law Chin Chuen and Ioannis Begietis (as CFO), who from the financial director of Folli Follie had undertaken the expansion of the FFG Group in Asia.
At the end of September 2018 the lies were over. The findings of Alvarez & Marsal, which conducted a forensic assessment of the FFG group companies in Asia (APAC), showed that data in the group’s financial statements had been falsified for several years.
The data manipulation mechanism established in Asia, which FF GROUP ASIA officials called “merry go around”, caused a stir. It was a huge “carousel”, a network of companies where business volumes “rotated” between different corporate entities and seemed many times larger than they really were.
Based on this practice, Folli Follie companies in Asia made and recorded sales with a company controlled by the group. The controlled company sold the merchandise directly or through another to another in the group.
The latter sold the goods to a legitimate external customer, a controlled company or group. Thus, with the “all around” transactions, both revenues and cost of sales of the group’s consolidated financial statements in Asia increased.
A total of 27 Hong Kong-based companies were identified as “vehicles” for this practice. At the same time, this virtually increased the availability of bank accounts.
Álvarez Marsal’s report provokes a domino of developments in Grupo FF. The founder of the company then proceeds to a statement-challenge stating then that “with great sadness and in the midst of the mortal crisis of our Company, which I founded and served for 36 years, I resign as Chairman of the Board.
I asked my wife, with whom we have worked at the Company all these years, to do the same. Unfortunately, I was not able to successfully control the activities of the Asian group I was in charge of, resulting in the current unpleasant picture in the group’s finances.
However, I have full confidence in my son Georgios Koutsolioutsos who is successfully managing the crisis with the assistance of the other members of the Board of Directors and his renowned staff and I declare that I will help them in their difficult task with whatever is deemed necessary ”.
For his part, George Koutsolioutsos, in a spasmodic attempt to separate his position from his father, declared a few days later in an interview that he was completely unaware of the falsified financial data, claiming that “my father is to blame for everything” …
At the same time, at the end of 2018, the first prosecutions were carried out, following the express investigation of the prosecutor Giannis Dragatsis. Dimitris Koutsolioutsos, his wife, his son and 11 members of the then management of the company are accused of criminal fraud against the investing public and money laundering.
A year later, the second, even more serious criminal process was instituted, in which Dimitris and George Koutsolioutsos were also accused of being co-founders of a criminal organization that falsified bank details to manipulate the market. In the second prosecution, father and son are charged with a total of three crimes (criminal organization, counterfeiting, market manipulation), while his wife Katerina Koutsolioutsou with one (manipulation).
With obstacles, George Koutsolioutsos also leaves the management of the company, a new one is placed with the intervention of the Hellenic Capital Market Commission (ss and after the current government takes a relevant legal initiative and aims to clear the scandal FF ).
Any effort, mainly by D. Koutsolioutsos, to avoid this effort has no result and the dismantling does not take long. The completion of the investigative process with the preventive detention of Dimitris and George Koutsolioutsou now takes the case to the Athens Council of Criminal Courts, where the continuation will be decided.
