Insolvency Sweden Yachts Group: Shocking report from the insolvency administrator

The investigation was actually only supposed to take three months. In the end, it took Paula Save almost nine months to clear up the bankruptcy of Mattias Rutgersson and his Sweden Yachts Group to some extent. She had to ask the bankrupt several times, under threat of punishment, to submit missing accounting documents. When the proceedings were opened, he had handed over receipts from several financial years in a disorganised box. This alone suggested that he was not particularly meticulous about his bookkeeping.

It is therefore no wonder that the insolvency administrator's eight-page final report criticises serious deficiencies in the accounting and financial bookkeeping. The files are so full of holes that it was not even possible to determine the exact date from which the Sweden Yachts Group was insolvent. Paula Save states:

"As far as the company's debts to the state are concerned, according to the Swedish Enforcement Agency, the company should have paid the late payment penalties under the Annual Accounts Act in November 2022. In addition, there are unpaid debts to individual suppliers due in March 2020, which means that insolvency appears to have already occurred in the first quarter of 2020."

Sweden Yachts Group owes yacht buyers, suppliers and the state almost 4.2 million euros

According to the final report, the liabilities totalled 4.172 million euros. The administrator was only able to find 11,860 euros in assets. The Sweden Yachts Group, which had 14 employees at the time of the bankruptcy, was therefore little more than an empty shell. Well-known suppliers had already stopped supplying the company years ago due to outstanding invoices.

However, until autumn 2023, when the inevitability of bankruptcy had long been clear, the shipyard boss repeatedly persuaded yacht buyers to make early payments for work that was never carried out and for components that were never delivered.

According to Paula Save's report, five boats were in various stages of construction at the time of the bankruptcy, including Georg Wrobel's Malö 43, which alone lost around 450,000 euros.

But Mattias Rutgersson also knew how to take money out of customers' pockets before he had even started manufacturing the laminating moulds, as in the case of Briton Mark Ryland, who had ordered a CR 390 DS. Ryland told YACHT that the bankruptcy was "a bad experience. I don't think we have any choice but to write the whole thing off."

• End for Sweden Yachts Group - Rutgersson shipyard insolvent
• What yacht buyers can learn from the recent shipyard failure
• Insolvency proceedings extended until 4 October

The insolvency administrator's report states:

"To summarise, it can be said that the company has benefited from large advances in this way without the company's customers receiving any corresponding value."

Did the head of the Sweden Yachts Group shift large sums of money before the insolvency?

But Paula Save found even more discrepancies. For example, there is evidence that Mattias Rutgersson shifted substantial amounts from Sweden Yachts Group AB to another company he controlled, SYG Marin AB - which itself was declared insolvent in December 2022:

"My review has shown that there have been extensive transactions between the bankrupt company and the affiliated company SYG Marin AB. The amounts are large and there is nothing to indicate that the transactions are part of the business (of Sweden Yachts Group AB). Due to deficiencies in the accounting, it is not possible to determine how much value was added to SYG Marin AB and what the basis for these transactions was." It also remains unclear "to what extent the transfers to SYG Marin AB contributed to the company's insolvency".

It is just one indication that the bankruptcy could still have criminal consequences for Rutgersson. There is much to suggest at the very least that the insolvency was delayed, if not deliberately brought about. After all, the high shortfalls cannot be explained by delivery bottlenecks due to corona, as the shipyard boss repeatedly told bona fide buyers.

It is also interesting in this context that more than 150 receipts for the last two financial years of the Sweden Yachts Group alone are simply missing from the accounts - although Paula Save Rutgersson had repeatedly asked for them to be supplied. She writes in the report:

"For the year 2023/2024, the physical accounts contain 138 vouchers, of which numbers 69 to 138 are missing... For the financial year 2022/2023, vouchers no. 362 to 470 are missing."

Incidentally, what the insolvency administrator found corresponded to the "often does not comply with the provisions of the Accounting Act on the layout of a document".

Paula Save concludes her investigation with a telling note: the payments made by Sweden Yachts Group to SYG Marin AB "could violate the provisions of the Swedish Companies Act and also result in a liability for damages under company law"she writes. She sees herself "due to the deficiencies in the accounting", however, "is not in a position to comment on this issue".

This is now actually a matter for the Swedish authorities, who had previously looked the other way in all previous bankruptcies of Mattias Rutgersson and his father Charles, the founder of CR Yachts and long-time deputy director of the Sweden Yachts Group. After Paula Save's devastating insolvency report and the national and international reporting on the case, this form of ignorance will, of course, be hard to maintain. At the very least, a ban on entrepreneurial activities for several years would have been long overdue in view of the incidents.

Paula Save has not yet responded to further questions from YACHT. We will report again as soon as she comments.