In spring 2019, the energy company CEZ from the Czech Republic was pleased to announce that it had acquired wind power projects with a possible total output of 110 megawatts in Lower Saxony.

"The cooperation with local partners helps us to cope with the local characteristics of the development," says the CEZ press release on April 26, 2019.

Marcus Jung

Editor in business.

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A few months later, the utility company Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) announced that it had acquired an on-shore wind farm in northern Germany through a joint venture.

Partner in both cases: the early-stage investor Holt Holding Group, backed by an entrepreneurial family from the Emsland.

Get stuck with an impostor

But shortly afterwards, the Czechs, Scots and other international companies from the energy sector had to admit that they were a suspected impostor: Their wind power projects had only been partially sold to them - or even only existed on paper. Because of the damage totaling around 10 million euros, Hendrik Holt, former director of the Holt Holding Group, several of his family members and the company's former financial director will have to answer before the Osnabrück district court from this Tuesday.

The public prosecutor's office accuses the quintet of eight cases of gang and commercial fraud in the period from mid-2015 to 2021. The 31-year-old Hendrik Holt, previously celebrated as a kind of young star in the wind energy industry, is said to have, like his co-defendants, actually marketed non-existent wind farm projects and received around 10 million euros from several international energy groups. Previously, the makers of Holt Holding are said to have initially forged land use agreements and then presented them to their business partners in good faith. In the case of SSE and an Italian energy company, the focus is on fictitious projects in Zeven and Rotenburg that were sold to both investors at the same time.At the CEZ, it is said to have been a total of 214 forged contracts and counterfeit letters from communities in the districts of Cloppenburg and Emsland that convinced the investor.

Arrest in the Adlon

Holt was arrested in the Berlin luxury hotel Adlon in spring 2020, and has been on remand in a Lower Saxony prison since then.

He has to answer in another case of serious fraud at the expense of a German wind energy company and for breach of trust.

According to various media reports, his co-defendants are said to have confessed in advance.

If it comes to a conviction by the 2nd Large Economic Criminal Chamber, the accused expect prison sentences of up to ten years.

The Osnabrück Regional Court has scheduled 52 trial days for the criminal process.