Savedroid wins before Cologne Higher Regional Court
Lisa Marie Münster | 19.10.2021In the second instance, the fintech gets justice. The fintech had long been in dispute with its former trustee. The latter must now hand over retained cryptocurrencies worth a good 35.3 million euros.
In the legal dispute of the fintech Savedroid, another ruling has been made, this time by the Higher Regional Court of Cologne. The company has thus also won in the second instance against its former ICO trustee, who must pay out retained cryptocurrencies worth a good 35.3 million euros to the fintech's new trustee. In addition, he must bear the costs of the proceedings and possible business losses of up to €1.5 million. Cologne has thus confirmed the ruling from Bonn in February 2020.
The company has a complicated history behind it: with an ICO, a crypto IPO, Savedroid raised 40 million euros and wanted to launch a platform for trading cryptocurrencies. Then founder Yassin Hankir staged a failed PR stunt: he shut down his company's phone and website for 24 hours, posting a picture of the beach himself. It seemed he had run away with the money he had raised. In the end, it turned out to be a joke meant to point out the dangers of ICO IPOs. But the startup's image still suffers from it today.
The joke was followed by a wild succession of lawsuits: Savedroid sued a partner who withheld ICO money; small investors sued Savedroid; the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt investigated Savedroid because of the ICO IPO. In 2020, the parent company Advanced Bitcoin Technologies AG announced that the Savedroid app would be discontinued; today, the website features the new app Trumpbit. The parent company is based in Liechtenstein, it bought Savedroid in 2019. In the same year, Savedroid went public another time with the help of a reverse takeover, i.e. a company takeover similar to a Spac.
With the 2018 ICO, Savedroid originally mandated its trustee to secure the process. The trustee refused to pay out the cryptocurrencies to Savedroid, which in turn got into contractual difficulties with its investors.
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