People who have been reading the content of this Blog may be aware that the memberships and investments peddled by Lyoness are effectively valueless and constitute nothing more than the right of participation in - and handing over money to - an obviously fraudulent racket, as well as the right to dupe others into doing the same.
It is also known that Lyoness has been using obvious, unoriginal methods of deception to give its racket a legitimate air, designed to switch off the critical and evaluative faculties of the people considering to participate in the racket, as well as any casual observer (including government regulators, politicians, media and certification agencies), and to make them believe that Lyoness is a legitimate company, hosting a mutually beneficial shopping community.
Although the majority of these lies have already been demolished and are no longer maintainable by the Lyoness racketeers and the deluded adherents, it has been hard for the Lyoness sceptics and opponents to effectively destroy the delusion that Lyoness is a successful, growing enterprise, for the financial administration of the mystifying labyrinth of corporate structures active under the collective noun 'Lyoness' has shown nothing but a growing number of members, partner companies and, consequentially, turnover.
Of course, it has been reported that Lyoness has been filing the investments made by its members as debt, mainly for tax purposes. What has been glanced over largely is that these investments do indeed constitute a liability for the Lyoness racket. Indeed, the members have been promised incredible returns on their investments, which are supposed to stay within a system and could never disappear for they officially constitute a down payment on the future purchase of gift vouchers. Therefore, next to the growth in participation and turnover, the amount of future financial obligations (i.e. debt) grows at an equal pace.
Additionally, what the overall financial figures do not tell, is that when looking at local markets (and Lyoness branches) individually, participation and turnover do not grow everywhere, but just in countries where Lyoness is newly introduced to the general public. As soon as it has been introduced in a country, the amount of members increases rapidly, and so does the turnover. However, when the market becomes saturated (i.e. no more people are interested in handing over their money to Lyoness) and, consequentially, criticism starts to appear on local forums and Blogs, the growth rate stagnates and eventually declines entirely.
Since most 'developed' countries have been entered by Lyoness, this pattern starts to show in the overall picture of the 'company' too. In an attempt to avert the inevitable disastrous collapse of Lyoness (and there with, the dreams of 3,000,000 members), Freidl has therefore moved his racket into countries where people often own insufficient funds to buy proper food. It is doubtful whether those countries will produce a sufficient amount of investors to keep the Lyoness racket up and running for much longer, unless Freidl has found a devious way to benefit from developmental aid, much like Herbalife has been pulling off in recent years.
In early entered countries like Switzerland, the turnover has already been reported to decrease, resulting in a situation in which the turnover (and/or assets) of (for instance) Lyoness Switzerland does no longer cover the incredible amount of debt that Lyoness Switzerland has built up in earlier years. So far, such gaps have been filled up with illicit earnings from newly entered countries, where the membership rates and turnover grow immensely. However, this system will no longer offer a way out when the Lyoness racket runs out of countries to expand to, and therefore, looses its source of revenue. Unless Freidl thinks of a way to considerably increase the inflow money into Lyoness (which he could do by starting a new racket, having his current followers put in additional investments, or maybe by convincing at least some of his members to go shopping once in a while), the Lyoness racket will soon fully collapse - for now it remains effectively bankrupt.
It is very important for prosecutors to examine all of Hubert Freidl's racket, because the 'Lyoness' labyrinth has been constructed to prevent, and/or divert, investigation, and isolate Freidl, and his criminal associates, from liablity.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most feeble, recent challenges to a major 'income opportunity' racket hiding behind a labyrinth of legally-registered corporate structures, came not from a rigorous criminal prosecution, but from a British government Dept's ill-advised civil prosecution.
In 2007, the 'Insolvency Service' of the UK Trade Ministry, attempted to bankrupt and shut-down 'Amway UK Ltd.' (in the interests of the public) on the grounds that the company's hidden debts vastly exceeded its declared assets.
Civil investigators discovered that 'Amway UK Ltd.' had never once declared a trading profit in 30 years, despite the fact that, during the same period, the company had unlawfully taken tens of millions of dollars in registration fees from a never-ending chain comprising hundreds of thousands of losing British investors in its so-called 'income opportunity.'
The British government filed an insolvency petition against 'Amway UK Ltd.,' expecting that the UK High Court would automatically close the company, because its declared assets did not cover all the funds it had taken unlawfully. Only after 'Amway UK Ltd.' was closed, could a criminal inquiry follow.
In order to escape being held to account, the bosses of 'Amway' first tried to pretend affinity with UK regulators - by effectively shutting down their own racket. When this tactic did not work, the company's attorneys then promised the UK High Court that all unlawful activities had been voluntarily reformed in the UK. Based on these, and other undertakings, a Judge mysteriously ruled that 'Amway UK Ltd.' had been breaking the law, but that it could continue without any financial penalty being imposed. The ruling, which broke legal precedent, but which seems to have been based on the fact that 'Amway UK Ltd.' hadn't itself been making any money, was upheld on appeal.
However, it was never explained to either the High Court or the Appeal Court that although, on paper, 'Amway UK Ltd.' had lost millions of dollars annually, behind this chronically-insolvent corporate front had lurked related advance fee frauds (comprising the sale of publications, recordings, tickets to meetings, etc., on the grounds that these materials contained secrets vital to achieving success).
It has been estimated that, using the 'Amway income Opportunity' as bait, around one billion dollars was quietly removed from around one million UK and Irish citizens. Most of this mountain of stolen cash wound up in the pockets of a handful of US citizens who have never faced the slightest investigation.
David Brear (copyright 2013)
Austrian authorities are already investigating on Lyoness, the home of Hubert Freidl. Some of the files have been put online, unfortunately you can't download them anymore for austrian courts forbade to keep them online, as this is an open case.
ReplyDeleteThe website where you could download these files in the past is:
www.plattform-lyoness.at It's some kind of a blog, written in german, but you should easily be able to find someone, who can translate most of the texts for you.
Anyway, there are two lawyers among my family, and after I (and them) have read those files, I (we) can guarantee you: Lyoness, as a company, will crumble within the timespan of one year, and that there is a VERY GOOD CHANCE, that Hubert Freidl, as well as some of his "Business-Partners", will go to Jail for quite a long time...
Presumeably, the Austrian authorities have medically-qualified advisors, but to save time (and expense), it doesn't take a genius to spot that Hubert Freidl is a pysychologically-dominant individual whose dangerous delusions are potentially-contagious, and who is quite obviously suffering from severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
ReplyDelete‘NPD’ is a psychological term first used in 1971 by Dr. Heinz Kohut (1913-1981). It was recognised as the name for a form of pathological narcissism in ‘The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 1980.’ Narcissistic traits (where a person talks highly of himself/herself to eliminate feelings of worthlessness) are common in, and considered ‘normal’ to, human psychological development. When these traits become accentuated by a failure of the social environment and persist into adulthood, they can intensify to the level of a severe mental disorder. Severe and inflexible NPD is thought to effect less than 1% of the general adult population. It occurs more frequently in men than women. In simple terms, NPD is reality-denying, total self-worship born of its sufferers’ unconscious belief that they are flawed in a way that makes them fundamentally unacceptable to others. In order to shield themselves from the intolerable rejection and isolation which they unconsciously believe would follow if others recognised their defective nature, NPD sufferers go to almost any lengths to control others’ view of, and behaviour towards, them. NPD sufferers often choose partners, and raise children, who exhibit ‘co-narcissism’ (a co-dependent personality disorder like co-alcoholism). Co-narcissists organize themselves around the needs of others (to whom they feel responsible), they accept blame easily, are eager to please, defer to others’ opinions and fear being seen as selfish if they act assertively. NPD was observed, and apparently well-understood, in ancient times. Self-evidently, the term, ‘narcissism,’ comes from the allegorical myth of Narcissus, the beautiful Greek youth who falls in love with his own reflection.
Currently, NPD has nine recognised diagnostic criteria (five of which are required for a diagnosis):
· has a grandiose sense of self-importance.
· is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success,
power, brilliance, beauty, ideal love, etc.
· believes that he/she is special and unique and can only be understood by other special people.
· requires excessive admiration.
· strong sense of self-entitlement.
· takes advantage of others to achieve his/her own ends.
· lacks empathy.
· is often envious or believes that others are envious of him/her.
· arrogant disposition.
David Brear (copyright 2013)