Last month Lyoness announced it was filing for bankruptcy in Europe.

Now it’s been revealed the MLM Ponzi scheme is drowning in ~$110 million in debt.

As reported by Swiss publication Beobachter on November 11th, Lyoness debt is a result of “a whole series of legal proceedings in recent years”.

Said legal proceedings have paved the way for Lyoness victims to claw their money back from the company.

At the end of 2021, (Lyoness’) balance sheet showed negative equity of 26 million.

At the end of 2022, the negative equity was already 68 million francs.

The balance sheet submitted to the bankruptcy judge shows that at the end of August 2023, the current assets of almost 30 million were offset by short-term debt of almost 82 million francs and long-term debt of 22.4 million francs.

Beobachter also points out that Lyoness’ public reasoning for bankruptcy is bogus.

In a press-release last month Richard Meixner, Managing Director of Lyoness Italy, claimed Lyoness’ bankruptcy was the result of “the pandemic, energy crisis and inflation”.

None of these reasons are cited in Lyoness’ bankruptcy filings.

Lyoness’ bankruptcy filing states that the company has “come under pressure from the authorities” since 2015/2016.

Due to several legal proceedings, Lyoness was “hardly able to find any more partner companies,” and at the same time it “lost a significant number of existing partner companies,” the single judge quotes in her decision from Lyoness’ bankruptcy petition.

The negative development was aggravated by legal proceedings, which led to refund obligations for customer credits in several countries.

I believe “partner companies” is a bad German auto-translation of “affiliates/distributors”.

Finally Beobachter notes that while Lyoness International AG and Lyoness Europe AG have filed for bankruptcy, Lyoness continues to operate through MyWorld Suisse GmbH and Lyconet Global AG.

It’d certainly be a shame if Swiss authorities allowed Lyoness and owner Hubert Freidl (right), to absolve itself of $110 million in debt through bankruptcy and shell company shenanigans.

Notwithstanding the multiple criminal investigations against Freidl in Austria and Germany, which to date have failed to go anywhere.