16 January 2018
In recent years, the press has reported on two important cases of pyramid schemes at national and international level: Afinsa and Fórum Filatélico. Despite being different companies, they shared a common modus operandi and both were seized by order of the Central Court of Instruction No. 5 of Madrid on 9 May 2006 within the framework of the so-called ‘Operation Atrio’, which is being prosecuted for alleged offences of fraud, money laundering and punishable insolvency.
The trials have taken place more than a decade after their judicial intervention. Those responsible for Afinsa were already convicted in 2016 and the ruling was ratified on 21 November 2017 in Ruling 749/2017 of the Criminal Division, Section 1 of the Supreme Court (Click here to see the full summary of the aforementioned Ruling).
The verdict: 8 years imprisonment for the main managers and 2 years for a necessary co-operator. In addition, they must jointly and severally compensate 190,022 small investors with 2,574 million euros, with Afinsa Bienes Tangibles, S.A. being listed as a subsidiary civil liability for the payment of these amounts.
The case of Fórum Filatélico has been in the media spotlight recently, as its trial sessions started in September 2017 and will last at least until spring 2018.
The objective, the means used and the result were practically identical for both companies.
Fórum filatélico was founded in 1979 and received several prestigious awards, including: the best Spanish company by the American company Dun & Bradstreet, the Golden Master award for the company’s president, as well as the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in France, among others. In addition, Forum was a sponsor of a well-known basketball team and of important sporting events, being supported by respected and influential personalities of the national scene. In this way, over the years, the company built up the necessary confidence for all those savers who decided to invest.
We go back more than three decades; access to information was much more limited and was not available at the click of a button as it is today. Hundreds of thousands of savers decided to invest in a tangible product: stamps. A product that offered guarantees, backed by its prestige and age, as well as being presented as a product with tax advantages.
They were sold as a safe investment, customers bought lots of stamps that appreciated in value over time, offering a higher return than the banks at the time, and were also affordable for a large sector of the population.
In this way, many investors, from different social and cultural backgrounds, decided to invest and participate in a pyramid business without being aware of it, thanks to the great confidence and security that Forum offered.
The philatelic investments of the new customers became the profits of the original customers and so, year after year, their profits increased.
We are still waiting to hear the verdict on the thirty or so people under investigation in the Fórum Filatélico case, which, according to forecasts, could be handed down this year.
Many customers and suppliers were surprised by the sudden intervention of Fórum Filatélico and Afinsa, which led to the immediate collapse of both companies and the plummeting value of their stock. To this day, it is still questioned how the Spanish authorities could have allowed this public and notorious operation for decades.
