End of the gold rush: authorities slow down TGI’s discount offer

That’s what the company says

“TGI AG emphatically rejects this accusation. The company sells physical fine gold to its customers – a trading transaction that does not require approval from the financial market supervisory authority in Liechtenstein as in the entire EEA,” said the company. “TGI AG will have the order legally reviewed within the appeal period and take the necessary legal remedies.” What is very important is “the correct classification of the scope of the order. The business activities of TGI AG were not completely prohibited. The product “Fine gold bars – Customer Basic 2% + loyalty discount” is not covered by the order and is available to customers unchanged.

“85 percent of the entire portfolio has not been criticized. And the other 15 percent, if the customer wants, we handle. That’s no problem at all. We just don’t want the customer to lose the discounts,” Kaltenegger tells KURIER. “And that’s why we offer the customer that he can stay in the contract, we just have to upgrade it because the contracts can’t have the option of termination. That was criticized. And if the customer agrees that there is no possibility of termination, then everything is fine, that’s what we offer the customer.” Addendum: “A reversal, that sounds bad to us, would of course be the cheapest form for TGI, because everyone loses all of their discount commissions, unfortunately.”

Already second order

On April 18, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) banned TGI from selling two products in Germany.

Over the past six years, the dubious gold business has apparently made a lot of money. Kaltenegger and his wife publicly indulge in luxury. Their self-produced reality show is running on Puls 4: “The Kalteneggers – A Family in a Gold Rush.” At the last opera ball they had the German comedian Oliver Pocher and his companion as guests, who also appeared in a TGI advertising video.

Controversial business model

Helmut Kaltenegger tried to defend his controversial business model in an interview with KURIER. The core message: Customers should continue to receive the discounts they promised. But the 72 percent discount offer has now disappeared from the TGI homepage. The discount model is not dead, it is just paused, they say. Kaltenegger also announced that his company would have a prospectus drawn up in Germany that would be valid in the entire DACH region, i.e. for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We are in “really, very close” communication with the German BaFin, the Austrian and Liechtenstein financial market regulators. The goal: to create a system “that everyone is happy with.”

Location in Dubai

At the same time, he announced a change of course in business. “We will no longer put our energy into the DACH region. We will slowly withdraw from the DACH region,” says the TGI founder. “We founded TGI International in Dubai many months ago.”
In one of the countless videos he speaks of at least two to three million potential customers.

“We are expanding internationally and will concentrate on countries in South America and Asia,” says Kaltenegger. “We have already had huge successes there. Whether we will withdraw from Vaduz is still a bit up in the air because we want and have to handle everything properly.”

Money-Making-Machine?

A new TGI manager recently described the company as a “money-making machine” in a video. The secret of the high discounts lies in partnerships with gold mines like in Sierra Leone, in which TGI is involved, as Kaltenegger claims. “The production costs for one grammage are only 30 percent,” explains Kaltenegger. A customer buys gold for 130 euros per gram, TGI buys it from its partner for the same price, but the partner produces it for only 30 percent of the cost. The difference of 70 percent is used. In addition, the partners traded in so-called raw gold bars and achieved a monthly return of “12 to 15 percent”. “Our partners earn around 300 percent with the capital in three years,” claims Kaltenegger. TGI receives an unspecified share of these profits – “X percent”.