Under the guise of running an art gallery, Joanna Segelström, a Pole with a Swedish passport, managed the financial pyramid. The prosecutor's office estimates the losses of people who trusted her at PLN 300 million. Part of the money went to a company registered in Cyprus.

Currently, Segelström is wanted by Interpol. According to the Polish prosecutor's office, she was supposed to deceive hundreds of people with promises of a quick return on investment in works of art. They did business with her, among others the current head of the Supreme Audit Office Marian Banaś (apparently he did not lose, he invested while the pyramid was paying out profits) and actress Grażyna Wolszczak.

The list of people who unknowingly invested in the pyramid includes people from all over Poland: entrepreneurs and private persons, who have invested from PLN 50,000 up to PLN 1 million. They were to receive from 18 to even 60 percent of return on investment. Many of them saw nothing of the money.

The Polish prosecutor's office, which estimates the losses at nearly PLN 300 million, claims that just over PLN 22 million have been recovered from this amount.

Joanna Segelström moved to Sweden from Wadowice in the 1990s. There she met her husband and gave birth to a son, Mikel. Then she opened a gallery in Trelleborg in the south of the country. According to the receiver's letter, which can be found in the Pandora Papers, "the profit from her gallery was then modest". In 2012, Segelström was already heavily indebted. The overdraft on her credit card of one of the Polish banks exceeded the agreed limit of PLN 200,000.

Since she knew there was no chance of taking loans from banks, she was supposed to come up with the idea of ​​creating a Ponzi scheme. Customers were bummed by the attractive prices of works of art and the high rates of return on these investments. Segelström offered them to buy them for a period ranging from six months to about a year and then promised to buy them back.

(Gazeta.pl)