The economy today
Financial scams: the Amber Gold affair in Poland
Audio 03:34
Former headquarters of the Amber Gold company in Gdańsk, Poland.
© Agnieszka Kumor / RFI
By: Agnieszka Kumor
4 mins
The case of the financial company Amber Gold ruined tens of thousands of Poles in 2012, but its legal component has only just been completed.
A scandal that quickly took a political turn.
With, for protagonists, an infernal couple who spawned the scam of the century in Poland.
Advertising
The Amber Gold scandal made headlines from July to September 2012. Ten years of proceedings followed, embellished with revelations, secret recordings, endless hearings before the parliamentary commission of inquiry… Because in the meantime the case became sensitive .
Finally, a judgment is rendered in May 2022.
Very smart young crooks
The financial company was founded in Gdańsk, a port city in northern Poland, in 2009. It promises its clients to invest in gold and dangles them with interests defying the competition of banks.
And it works.
At its head, Marcin and Katarzyna Plicht: “
They were each around twenty years old.
He finished high school in an economic high school, she did not have a diploma.
Marcin had previously been convicted twice for fraud.
But, having taken the name of his wife, he remained anonymous, he could not be linked to his former affairs.
As boss of Amber Gold, he never showed himself publicly.
A very smart crook
,” Krzysztof Katka recalls today.
This investigative journalist for the daily
Gazeta Wyborcza
did not follow in the footsteps of the infernal couple until three years later.
In 2012, he investigates a low-cost airline, OLT Express, which has just filed for bankruptcy and which brings in its wake Amber Gold, of which it is the subsidiary.
The journalist immediately makes the connection between the two cases.
“
Amber Gold is just a vast financial pyramid.
When we look at it in 2012, it is already too late
: the damage is done.
The documents were scrutinized and it was found that the money transfers made by Amber Gold were false.
The group could not buy the airline since they did not have the money to do so.
»
The responsibles
No money ?
And for good reason.
The allegedly purchased gold simply does not exist.
Amber Gold customers are paid by the funds brought in by the new "
pigeons
" ready to be plucked.
How is such a scam possible?
Gazeta Wyborcza
reporter Katarzyna Włodkowska
seems to know the answer:
The first culprits are the Polish parliamentarians.
In 2006, they refused to vote for the amendment which submitted the para-banking sector to the control of the financial market policeman, the KNF.
These financial companies offer alternative services to the loans and deposits of traditional banks.
Also guilty, the KNF, which only sounded the alarm after the media revelations.
Just like the prosecutor who asked for the charges to be dropped
.
A highly political affair
Finally, the investigation is launched.
But as it progresses, the scandal takes a political turn.
The former Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, is heard before a parliamentary committee.
His opponents accuse him of negligence vis-à-vis the company Amber Gold which would have benefited from a certain benevolence on the part of justice.
One of the people in charge of public relations in the low-cost company OLT Express was none other than the son of the former Prime Minister, Michał Tusk.
It would be the father who warned him to leave the ship before it started to sink.
Accusations of clientelism fuse, but the evidence is sorely lacking.
The victims
During its activity between 2009 and 2012, the case claimed some 50,000 victims.
Krzysztof Katka met them: “
They were small savers who invested all their savings.
But also businessmen, economists or politicians who have lost millions.
Believing themselves deceived, they preferred to remain anonymous.
They were ashamed in front of their neighbours, their families or their colleagues
”.
Lesson
Have lessons been learned from this vast scam?
Will there be a before and after Amber Gold?
To be sure, corporate financial reporting is no longer a mere formality, as it was then.
According to Katarzyna Włodkowska, Polish justice has also taken a big step forward.
“
As soon as a suspicion of this kind of business arises, an investigation is launched for verification.
But the Poles are not immune to a new financial affair.
The company GetBack and its fake bonds sold between 2018 and 2019 is sad proof of this.
What about the Amber Gold crooks?
Sentences of fifteen and eleven and a half years in prison were pronounced against the couple.
As for the stolen money, only part of the 850 million zlotys has been found.
The rest, engulfed in the operation of the fake company and its delusions of grandeur.
20 million zlotys is what the public treasury will have to pay to the 200 victims who brought a collective action before the courts.
Ten long years after the fact...
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Economy
Poland
Crime
On the same subject
The economy today
Financial scams: the carbon tax scam
The economy today
Financial scams: Africrypt, the biggest bitcoin scam of all time