Clemens Tönnies
Clemens Tönnies is a German businessperson and billionaire who owns 45% of the meat processing company Tönnies Holding. In 2022, Forbes estimated his wealth at 1.6 billion US dollars. From 2001 to 2020, he was a chairman of the supervisory board of the football club FC Schalke 04.
Early life
Tönnies was born as the son of the butcher Klemens Tönnies and his wife Maria in Rheda, where he grew up with six siblings.Career
He took over the family company after his brother Bernd Tönnies died of a lung infection following a heart attack in 1994.Tax investigation
In 2012, German tax investigators searched Tönnies' office due to suspected tax evasion.In January 2013, the German Federal Cartel Office fined Tönnies 90,000 euros because he had omitted his shares in the Zur Mühlen Group when attempting to merge his company with the slaughterhouse company Tummel. The Cartel Office cited the shares as a main reason for rejecting the merger.
Tönnies obtained public funds from the German tax administration via CumEx deals. In these deals, he obtained refunds of taxes he had never paid.
Price fixing
The Tönnies subsidiaries Böklunder, Plumrose and Karl Könecke Fleischwarenfabrik engaged in price fixing and were fined 128 million euros by the Federal Cartel Office. However, the antitrust agency was unable to obtain the fines, because Tönnies had transferred the companies' activities to the Zur Mühlen Group and then liquidated the subsidiaries due to pay fines. As a result of this, the German government closed this loophole in September 2016.Criticism
In June 2020, government-mandated mass testing for SARS-CoV-2 found that at least 1,500 of 7,000 workers at the main Tönnies plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück were infected. On 18 June 2020, parents and children held a demonstration in front of Tönnies' house, since due to the danger of infection, schools and kindergartens had been closed.Tönnies has sued a camera team, which led the German TV show to make an episode about how he deals with critics.