Niels Stolberg has lost his appeal against a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
The appeal was turned down on Wednesday 19 December by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice.
It marks the end of the long-running case that focused on Stolberg's role in the downfall of German heavylift and multipurpose (MPP) operator Beluga Shipping.
Stolberg, 59, will be subject to the original sentence handed down by the District Court of Bremen on 15 March 2018. However, it is uncertain when his sentence will start, according to German press reports.
The Bremen court had sentenced the former high-flyer on numerous charges of false accounting and credit fraud.
The jailing of Beluga’s chief executive draws to a close a notorious chapter in German shipping history.
It marks a sad end to the career of a man who was for the best part of a decade Germany’s fastest-rising shipping star.
Stolberg established Bremen-based Beluga Shipping in 1995 in the heyday of the shipping boom.
In 15 years, he grew Beluga into one of the world’s largest heavylift and MPP operators, with a fleet of 70 ships.
But Stolberg allegedly overstated the price of his company's newbuildings to obtain bigger bank loans. The court heard this specifically related to 20 vessels ordered after 2006.
The amount under dispute was about €93m ($103m today).
The arrival of a new investor, Oaktree Capital Management, led to the whistle being blown in March 2011 — and Beluga filed for bankruptcy on 16 March that year.
Prosecutors subsequently spent nearly four years building a case against Stolberg.
The case went to court in January 2016 and turned out to be one of the biggest maritime fraud cases heard in Germany to date.
