PrimeEnergy affair: “I don’t know why we invested so much”

Published on November 1, 2024 at 8:45 p.m. / Modified on November 1, 2024 at 8:47 p.m.

While PrimeEnergy proposed on Friday to certain investors to postpone the repayment of their bonds by two years (read opposite), several hundred small savers fear losing everything in the probable bankruptcy of the Basel group, also present in Geneva. “We had put this money aside to help finance the education of our four grandchildren; we will no longer be able to do it,” one saver explained to us. Moved, she admits having invested a limited sum herself (the minimum bet was 10,000 francs), “but my husband much more, I don’t know why we invested so much”, she wonders, without want to specify the amounts concerned.

Specializing in photovoltaics, PrimeEnergy Cleantech operates more than 80 power plants installed on roofs in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, according to its prospectuses. The company borrowed mainly from individuals, via bonds. But large loans made to its main shareholder in recent years have not been repaid, creating such cash flow problems that the company warned on October 18 that it had no choice but to go bankruptcy. Some 100 million would be in danger, according to the collective which brings together savers. A criminal complaint has been filed in Basel-Landschaft.

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