Huge losses in Spanish solar park for Norwegian investor

Jens Arne Svartedal .Photo: Heiko Junge / Scanpix

Jens Ulltveit-Moe, two skiing stars and other Norwegian investors may have lost 130 million on an investment in a solar energy project in Spain.

I soon got a feeling that this really was “monkey business,”  skier Jens Arne Svarteda says to the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.
From 2006,  a group of Norwegian investors, including Jens Ulltveit-Moe, Agder Energi and the former cross-country skiers Jens Arne Svartedal (40) and håvard bjerkeli (38), invested about 130 million in solar company Barahonda Investors.
The company’s solar park was scheduled to be built on a 300 acre plot in the Murcia region in the southeast of Spain.  The planned capital expenditure was about 600 million, of which around 130 million came from Norwegian investors.
The Spanish initiator of the project, Carlos Torregrosa,  withdrew 47 million NOK from the company account and ran off with the money, according to the chairman of  Barahonda Investors Bjarne Hammer. The Norwegian Board has pressed charged against Torregrosa for economic crimes and demand to be reimbursed 130 million. They are pursuing the matter with the Spanish bank and demand that they get the amount back from the bank.
In an email to the newspaper , Carlos Torregrosa writes  that the allegations against him are “false, incomplete and malicious.”

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today