Hamburg - A German court sent Alexander Falk, 38, a former golden boy of German investment, to four years in prison Friday, convicting him of attempted fraud in the 2000 sale of shares in his company Ision. Lawyers for Falk, the jet-setting son of a millionaire German map publisher, fought every step of the way during a trial lasting three and a half years and made plain they would keep appealing all the way to the highest court.
The case was one of Germany's main attempts to punish the excesses of the dot-com boom, in which starry-eyed investors in Europe and the United States believed the internet meant the dawn of a "New Economy" and men in their 20s were hailed as business geniuses.
The Hamburg state court said it was convinced Falk tried to mislead a now vanished British company, Energis, which bought into his German company Ision as the boom spread.
Ision, which has since gone out of business, used to build websites, still a novel idea at the time, for corporate clients.
Falk and four other executives who were also on trial were accused of creating dummy orders to make Ision appear to be worth more than it was. Falk called the charges "absurd" Friday and said he would appeal.
Judge Nikolaus Berger said a full charge of fraud under German law required a quantification of the harm and this was impossible.
Prosecutors claimed Energis overpaid by 37 million euros (57 million dollars), but Falk lawyers argued that market values were not factual.
The five accused were convicted of a joint attempted fraud, a breach of German company law and being accessories to falsification of accounts.
Tall, wealthy and self-confident, Falk raged at spending 22 months in pre-trial custody till he was freed on bail in April 2005.
Ision's chief financial officer was jailed for 30 months and three others received suspended terms, two years in two cases and the other eight months.
The 157 hearing days of the trial began on December 3, 2004.
