According to Danish daily Berlingske Tidende founder and major shareholder, Bøje Bendtzen, under suspicion for having Scancom pay bills for nonexistent serviced to companies related to himself, thus putting the money is his own pockets.
The company headquarted in Korsør, Denmark, produce and design garden furniture in Vietnam with wood from Brazil.
The suspicion of Bøje Bendtzen’s shady actions arose after Berlingske Tidende spoke to several former Scancom employees.
One was Lars Kolind, who after seven years on the board and a visit in Vietnam had enough. He left the board in April, after heavily criticising the way the company was run.
“I can not lend my name to the way the company does business anymore, Lars Kolind said to Berlingske.
His criticism was so overwhelming that government run Danish investor “Industrialiseringsfonden for Udviklingslandene” (IFU) had to work to insert a neutral board that would start an independent investigation of Scancom, Berlingske Tidende writes.
IFU has been large shareholder in Scancom since 2003 and today the government run organisation has a DKK 60 million loan in Scancom’s Vietnamese operations and a DKK 30 million loan in the company’s Brazilian subsidiary.
IFU may retire from the partnership
The mess might result in IFU retiring from the partnership. Head of IFU Sven Riskær elaborates.
“We have since the start of 2006 been aware that there are problems and there are activities that we have asked Scancom to stop,” Sven Riskær says to Berlingske Tidende.
The IFU head doesn’t want explain precisely what the investigation is aimed to examine, but in a IFU-press-release the cause is mentioned as “possible managerial problems”. Once the investigation had finished it is not likely that the result is made public.
”Our primary job is to rescue the company from the problems it might have,” Sven Riskær says.
