Niels Stolberg has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his role in the downfall in Beluga Shipping.
The verdict in the long-running fraud trial was delivered this afternoon by the Bremen District Court.
The 57 year old Stolberg had been indicted on several charges of credit fraud and false accounting while at the head of the Bremen based shipping company, which went bankrupt in 2011.
Three co-defendants have been handed suspended sentences, according to German media reports.
Stolberg – a former golden boy of German shipping -- had also argued for a suspended sentence for his role in Beluga’s accounting affairs.
But prosecutors had pressed for a longer custodial sentence of four and a half years.
The verdict brings to a conclusion a mammoth trial which began on 20 January 2016.
In his last statement to the court on March 8, Stolberg was reported by German media as sounding contrite and remorseful.
The mistakes he had made had cost him everything: his life’s work, his reputation and his health, he told the court.
He had also endured personal bankruptcy over the past six years and had suffered from an aggressive form of cancer during the trial, he said.
Stolberg finished his statement saying that he wants “nothing more than a normal life,” reports says.
But that was not enough to sway the prosecutors pressing for a harsher sentence after serious allegations of financial fraud and embezzlement.
Their 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 , heavylift and project cargo vessels.
Beluga filed for bankruptcy shortly afterwards and Stolberg and three former Beluga colleagues were indicted on charges linked to its accounts filed between 2006 and 2010.
That included alleged irregularities in the financing of 20 newbuildings ordered after 2006 costing EUR 93m ($114m).
