A check for nearly six billion dollars – including penalties and reimbursements – and an admission of being guilty of fraud. Here is the agreement that the German insurance giant Allianz has reached with the American authorities to put an end to the issue of the proceeding initiated by the Stars and Stripes authorities on the Alpha funds of the subsidiary Allianz Global Investors, which collapsed when the pandemic broke out in 2020.
The Justice Department then announced that Gregoire Tournant, the former fund manager, was indicted for conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice.
In recent months, the Munich-based company had announced provisions of around 5.6 billion euros, precisely due to the question of the funds of Allianz Global Investors, which suffered losses of billions of dollars during the market downturn at the beginning of the pandemic.
The “Structured alpha funds” had recorded heavy losses, in some cases even higher than 80%, sparking the ire of many subscribers – including some US pension funds – who had sued Allianz and pushed the Sec (US Consob) , alongside the US Department of Justice and also Bafin, the German Consob, to investigate the matter. According to the investigators, the risks of the funds in question were deliberately misrepresented, not giving clear information – reconstructs the Bloomberg – on the diversification and hedging strategies adopted.