Last but not least: How to park excess money
Nespresso’s sales have skyrocketed in recent years to such an extent that they could no longer be reconciled with the Nestlé Group’s budget guidelines. For example, because so much money was spent on television advertising that the ORF could no longer air it all, the managing director of Nespresso Austria funneled the money into a family-owned PR firm.
A superior had advised him to park the surplus money. According to Tagesanzeiger.ch, the managing director of Nespresso Austria said this on Tuesday in the Vienna Criminal Court. No one would have known what to do with the money. In the end, the managing director was able to solve his luxury problem. He set up a PR agency under his wife's name as a sham. This was used to conduct business with the coffee portioner through another company on paper. According to his confession, the manager of Nespresso Austria allegedly added unjustified mark-ups to the invoices and paid his wife's company generous success commissions. As the Tages Anzeiger continues, most of the alleged events, demonstrations, promoter training and competitions did not even take place.
The spoils of the bogus PR company amounted to 2.7 million euros. This was all used up. According to the managing director of Nespresso Austria, they had certainly lived, traveled, bought expensive gifts for business partners and one or two expensive horses. How could there be any money left over to hold a few of the alleged PR events?
