Yesterday’s verdict in the trial of Niels Stolberg and three co-defendants brought to a conclusion a long-running trial which began in January 2016
Stolberg was sentenced to three and a half years in prison having been indicted and found guilty on several charges of credit fraud and false accounting while he was the chief executive of Beluga Shipping, which went under in 2011.
According to German media reports, his co-defendants were given suspended sentences.
Stolberg’s lawyers had sought a suspended sentence and in his concluding statement to the court last week, German media reported that he sound contrite and remorseful.
The case has it origins in the investigations that commenced in March 2011, after Oaktree Capital Management, which had invested in Beluga, alerted the prosecutor to alleged “financial irregularities” at the multipurpose and heavy lift shipping line.
Stolberg has the right to appeal against the sentence, but did not do so immediately.
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