Bankrupt Welcome Energy owes €49 million, customer may not receive anything | Financial

This week saw the publication of the second bankruptcy report of Van Raaijen, a trustee of the firm of Schop & Okkerse Advocaten, after the Midden-Nederland Welkom Energie court declared bankruptcy on 29 October last year.

Welcome Energie had more than 90,000 customers, 70,000 have claimed money back, together good for €20 million. Processing their claims since last year turned out to be taking much longer than expected, according to the bankruptcy trustee of the law firm.

Negative power

The bankruptcy report from which the AD quotes shows that the energy company of entrepreneur Jaap Bakker has virtually no assets from which the bankruptcy trustee could pay the claims. There is a negative equity of €9.5 million.

Consumers are currently at the back of the row with a large number of creditors. First of all, there is the tax authorities, which are the largest individual creditor with almost €13 million. The trustee hopes that customers will receive a part back through a tax refund by the tax authorities. The tax authorities are processing the applications.

In addition, there are another fifteen companies and institutions that are claiming €6 million, including the UWV. Ten employees worked there. It is unclear whether Rabobank has a priority position as a lender of Welkom Energie.

Length of contract

There was more than €2 million in assets. Energy company Eneco took over the 90,000 customers of Welkom Energie for this amount. This happened at a time when energy rates skyrocketed. Former customers had to pay considerably more than the rates they had taken out with Welkom Energie.

According to Eneco, a maximum price was never asked, but because of the market prices it was impossible not to pass on any increase.

Curator Van Raaijen has reclaimed money from a number of customers. A total of €5 million. During the bankruptcy settlement, they made use of an option in the rules not to be at the bottom of the debtor list.

With a so-called ‘notification of wrongful collection’ to their bank, they had their monthly energy costs refunded. For some, this happened up to thirteen months ago.

According to the bankruptcy trustee, too much has been reversed in a large number of cases. The bankruptcy trustee has engaged collection agency Collect4U to recover the money from these customers.

Some capital at Welkom Energie can still come in from the gas stock that was once purchased for customers at GasTerra. That batch of gas is worth millions at current high market prices. But GasTerra disputes this ownership.

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