Folli Follie report unveils 17-year scam

The troubled Folli Follie company's major shareholders, the Koutsolioutsos family, reaped the benefits of a well-orchestrated fraud scheme that lasted for at least 17 years, under the nose of the supervisory authorities, generating hundreds of millions of euros in profits, according to an audit report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The roughly 220-page report shows that the group's management had, from 2001 to 2017, inflated its sales, profits and equity, through virtual purchases and sales from/to both affiliated companies and completely nonexistent ones.

These fictitious transactions, even using fake bank documents, between 27 companies in different parts of the world, mainly in Asia, were called the "merry-go-round" by company executives.

In 2017 alone, sales were inflated by 1 billion dollars and equity by €2 billion. The falsified financial data led to an...

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