Bankrupt's 100kg gold coin for sale
Bankrupt's 100kg gold coin for sale
AUSTRIA-CANADA-GOLD-COIN
Ruined investment firm head Wolfgang Auer von Welsbach's Canadian Mint 100kg gold coin is up for auction today in Vienna. Source: AFP
ONE of the world's biggest coins is to go to auction today, put on the market by Wolfgang Auer von Welsbach, whose financial ruin was exposed by the same crisis that has made big chunks of gold a hot item among usually conservative Austrian investors.
Mr von Welsbach, great-grandson of a 19th-century Austrian industrialist who invented the lighter flint and the gas mantle, founded the investment firm AvW in 1991.
On May 4, AvW Group filed for bankruptcy, by which time Mr von Welsbach had been taken into custody, suspected of fraud and embezzlement.
Mr von Welsbach had propped up his investment group by selling up to 400 million ($564m) worth of participation certificates, a form of share with no voting rights, which investors believed the company would buy back when they wanted out.
But when the bull market turned bearish and the real estate and equity portfolios stopped performing, it turned out there were no funds left to do this, and the company had a total investment portfolio of 229m.
The prosecutor's office stepped in and is investigating irregularities involving AvW and its chief executive, ranging from trading securities without a licence to stock price manipulation, and illegally skimming company funds.
Mr von Welsbach is in jail pending charges.
The Maple Leaf coin is part of AvW's remaining assets, which also include sizeable stakes in a handful of Austrian publicly listed companies and a large real estate portfolio.
Bought in 2007 directly from the Royal Canadian Mint, the gold coin, some 53cm in diameter - about the size of a car wheel - and 3cm thick, and weighing 100kg, was one of only five made, each with a face value of $C1m, at that time about 660,000.
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