27/07/2022
You have all heard the name Frederich Graf von Luxburg. This person approached us as the founders of JuicyFields a little over a year ago and presented an elaborate proposal to not only deal with the BaFin situation that the company faced but to also assist us with the preparation of a prospectus as per BaFin requirements in order for JuicyFields to become compliant with regulatory guidelines in Germany. After the first few months of charging us between 100,000 and 300,000 Euros per month for his legal services, Graf von Luxburg informed us that it will be necessary to also register JuicyFields in the Netherlands. Unbeknown to us, von Luxburg did indeed register a company in the Netherlands with the name Juicy Holdings B.V. and appointed only one person, a Dr. Muller who was under his control, as the single director and board member of this company. Despite his undertakings that he would add us to the list of directors and board members, this never happened. Von Luxburg then proceeded to change the name of one of his own Swiss registered companies to Juicy Fields AG for the purpose of holding 100% of the shares of the Netherlands JuicyFields company in the name of this Swiss company. In the Swiss company, von Luxburg appointed his younger brother Stefan Graf von Luxburg and the same Dr. Muller who was acting as sole director and board member of the Netherlands company, as the only two board members and directors of Juicy Fields AG in Switzerland. This was clearly, in hindsight, a deliberate action by von Luxburg, to structure a takeover of the JuicyFields platform from its founders & developers, who had started the business originally in Germany. All of this information is in public records and can be verified with company house both in the Netherlands and in Switzerland.
When confronted with this discovery, von Luxburg then informed us that we can continue with operations in the Juicy Holdings B.V. company name for which bank accounts were opened. During the past ten days, von Luxburg attempted to also take over the company bank accounts in Cyprus without the knowledge or consent of the founders of the JuicyFields platform. The bank informed us and further queried the unusual activities via the authorised contact names on the BV account. We had to immediately act and reluctantly made the decision to freeze all operations as we were not sure what the extent of these illegal attempts to take over the company bank accounts were.
The decision to suspend all business activities has unfortunately damaged the reputation of JuicyFields immensely, especially due to the fact that a lot of speculation that the company has been running a Ponzi scheme has done the rounds. This is extremely far removed from the truth. For two years, JuicyFields has operated properly and our clients, eGrowers and financial service providers have never had reason to complain about our performance on our business. We have also only used properly licensed financial institutions through which to conduct the Juicy Fields business operations. The attempts by von Luxburg to illegally take control of the accounts at these financial institutions has obviously caused these financial institutions to suspend all of our operating accounts. We are currently cooperating fully with these financial institutions.
The problem with having to request financial institutions to suspend and freeze monies in our accounts as a method to safeguard against third party theft, is that our business operations are also immobilised. In all cases where a financial institution has suspended or frozen an account, the financial institution is obligated to notify the financial intelligence unit (FIU) of its member state and these accounts can only be unfrozen once the FIU has concluded their investigations.
The above has now resulted in us being left with the following actions:
To start a formal process to refund capital investments to all affected eGrowers who have legally invested funds with JuicyFields. Information on this process will soon be released.
To still launch, in September, our planned new platform that had already been developed for this purpose, and to offer our existing eGrowers the opportunity to continue doing business with us under this new platform.
More information will become available during the month of August.
We fully understand the frustration and uncertainty that has been caused by these recent events and we would like to apologise for this in no uncertain terms. At the same time, we want to assure everyone that despite the attempts of certain persons like Frederich von Luxburg to feed false information to you, we are dedicated to resolve the problems that he has caused and at the same time ensure that your investments are returned to you, and for those who still believe in us, to have the choice to continue doing business with us. All that we can ask for is your patience right now. We will keep you informed on developments as and when they develop.
The Juicy Fields Founding Members
