Friday January 14, 2022
Prefer to sell to wholesalers?
Netzagentur investigates energy discounters
Stromio, Grünwelt and Gas.de will stop delivering to hundreds of thousands of customers shortly before the end of the year. The suspected owner is now under investigation. Did he prefer to sell electricity and gas to wholesalers rather than to end customers? Unclear ownership could complicate the investigation.
According to a report, the managing director of the energy discounters Stromio, Grünwelt and Gas.de was targeted by the authorities after the deliveries were stopped and hundreds of thousands of electricity and gas customers were terminated. As the “Spiegel” reports, the Federal Network Agency is investigating the suspicion that the companies run by the alleged owner Ömer V. preferred to sell gas and electricity profitably to wholesalers instead of supplying their own end customers. This suspicion was voiced by market participants.
According to the report, the provider’s owner, Callax Holding GmbH, is also being checked in accordance with the Money Laundering Act. The holding is said to have made more than 300 million euros in profit between 2014 and 2019. According to the report, however, there are doubts about ownership.
At the end of December, electricity provider Stromio, with its brands Stromio and Grünwelt Energie, stopped supplying electricity without warning. Stromio had been “confronted with an unprecedented price explosion on the European energy trading centers for a few weeks,” the company explained on its website at the time. The company had advertised “electricity at a discount price”.
The industry association BDEW had sharply criticized the procedure and spoke of a “serious regulatory gap”. He called for government intervention. Low-cost providers operated profiteering at the expense of customers, it said.