Founders sue Envion CEO Matthias Woestmann’s Corp. for world’s first analogue ICO hacking. Outsider CEO faces charges after grab for $100 million ICO company, attempts to sell to highest bidder
The founding team of the Envion project have taken legal action against the shareholders of envion AG (Switzerland), namely Quadrat Capital GmbH, whose shareholder and managing director Matthias Woestmann is also acting as board member (CEO) of Envion AG, after he unlawfully secured the majority stake in Envion AG in breach of contractual obligations. The company has been left paralyzed with no word from Woestmann for many months.
Envion AG is a blockchain startup operating out of Berlin which produces cryptocurrency mining containers powered by renewable energy. After an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) that raised $100 million, plans to create mobile blockchain data centers which install on-site at power plants have now been put on hold by an acrimonious legal battle that pits the CEO against the rest of the company.
The founding team, led by Michael Luckow, partnered with the former newsman and energy industry investor Matthias Woestmann under the impression the elder businessman would bring in investors and advisors to the project from his network and could take up administrative responsibilities while the founders focused on the highly technical project. Woestmann instead proved to be a liability with investors and exploited administrative maneuvers to take control of the company without any visible attempt to execute on the business plan.