The two year trial of former Beluga Shipping chief executive Niels Stolberg is drawing to a close.
Judges in Bremen will this week deliver their verdict on what has proven one of the most notorious legal cases of post-KG (limited partnership) era.
Prosecutors are demanding that Stolberg – a former golden boy of German shipping -- serves a four and a half years sentence. Stolberg has asked the court for a probationary sentence.
The verdict is expected to be delivered on Thursday afternoon, drawing a line under the long running legal battle which began on 20 January 2016.
In his last statements to the court on March 8, 57-year-old Stolberg is reported sounding contrite and remorseful.
Several German media reports cite him as admitting having make mistakes for which he was today sorry.
Those mistakes had cost him everything: his life’s work, his reputation and his health, he told the court.
Stolberg had also endured personal bankruptcy over the past six years and had suffered from an aggressive form of cancer during the trial, he said.
“I came to the limit of what a human can endure,” Stolberg is quoted by the Bild as telling the court.
Stolberg finished his statement saying that he wants “nothing more than a normal life,” it says.
Stolberg’s ordeal is a result of the former Beluga boss battle against allegations of financial fraud and embezzlement.
Those investigations began in March 2011 after private-equity investor Oaktree Capital Management alerted the prosecutor to alleged “financial irregularities” in Beluga, a company that operated a fleet of 72 multipurpose (MPP)/heavylift/project cargo vessels.
Beluga filed for bankruptcy shortly afterwards and its ships ended up with competitors, including a dozen that went to Oaktree-controlled Hansa Heavy Lift (HHL).
Stolberg and three former Beluga colleagues were subsequently leveled with three indictments.
The most eyecatching indictment related to alleged irregularities in the financing of 20 newbuildings costing EUR 93m ($114m).
In November 2015, Stolberg told TradeWinds: “It’s good, the trial now actually begins.
“The time of waiting finally is over. A lot will be put into perspective in the course of the proceedings, I am convinced,” he said.
The verdict is set to to be handed down by the Bremen District Court on Thursday afternoon at 2pm.
