HS Helsinki The support pot of the café at the center of the hustle and bustle is returned to the donors – The service that took care of the crowdfunding: “Nothing like this has happened so far”

Patron returns the money raised to support the café Cafe Bon Temps through a crowdfunding campaign, says a representative of the service Pauliina Seppälä.

HS said on Tuesday about a crowdfunding campaign in which a café entrepreneur in Meilahti asked help in a difficult financial situation. The campaign raised about 50,000 euros.

Patron is a service based on crowdfunding. The announcement in the patronage did not say that the company had been declared bankrupt on 12 January.

With bankruptcy, the legal status of the entrepreneur changes and the assets of the company are transferred to the control of the creditors. This control is exercised by the trustee. According to Seppälä, the campaign notice published in the patronage, the content of which had been prepared by the entrepreneur himself, did not state that the company had already been declared bankrupt.

“We will return the money to the financiers, and therefore the bankruptcy is likely to be sealed,” says Seppälä.

“That money is in the donors’ temporary wallets, and I’ll get it back in full with one button.”

Read more: Beloved café in distress asked customers for help in Meilahti – Then an embarrassing ambiguity was revealed behind the campaign

Seppälä according to the patron made a decision to return the money on Wednesday at about two in the afternoon.

“The bankruptcy estate does not want to accept money,” says Seppälä.

“When it began to look like the cancellation of the bankruptcy was not a sure thing, we wanted to make sure that the financiers who participated through us did not lose their money.”

From the patronage’s point of view, a legally awkward situation arose because the entrepreneur did not report bankruptcy before and during the campaign announcement.

“We have not made an announcement,” Seppälä emphasizes.

“We are a platform where everyone makes their own campaigns. We are like a marketplace where everyone has their own store. But of course we want people to see us as a reliable place to shop, ”says Seppälä.

“Legally, the campaigner is responsible for the content. In practice, we want to do more than we should legally do so that there are no unpleasant situations. We have probably had 2,000 campaigns and nothing like this has happened so far, ”says Seppälä.

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“This was not checked because there has been no situation where someone would mislead us in a certain way.”

Seppälä notes that he or others in the Patronage are not experts in bankruptcy law, but that the company ‘s basic financial information will always be reviewed after this incident.

“From now on, of course, we are also going to check, after all [konkurssin] can be seen in Suomen Asiakastiedo. This was not checked because there has been no situation where someone would mislead us in a certain way. From now on, when we have a lot of contacts from restaurants, we will be reviewed. “

According to Seppälä, it would have been good if the announcement published in the Patronage had read, for example: here you want to help the bankrupt filed.

“But we didn’t know it was bankrupt and it didn’t occur to us that it was. It would have been harder for this issue to have been clear before this campaign was launched. ”

In any case, according to Seppälä, the matter would have come to light at the latest when the money transfer had started.

He notes that the case will also incur costs for the Patron, but they will remain scholarships.

“It just didn’t make sense to us. After all, we are losing money here because we have paid all the brokerage fees, but in this situation we are not starting to charge them from this entrepreneur. ”

A year ago In January, the entrepreneur was declared bankrupt at the request of the employment pension company Varma. At that time, however, the bankruptcy was canceled at the last minute when the debtor and the creditor jointly agreed on a payment plan.

Earlier this year, the entrepreneur filed for bankruptcy with the taxpayer. According to the law, the debtor has the opportunity to apply for revocation of bankruptcy by filing an application for revocation with the district court within eight days of the debtor being declared bankrupt.

In practice, the trustee often assists in filing an application for revocation if it is decided to file one, as it requires the knowledge of the sections of the law.

When the cancellation case is resolved, the court will hear the trustee and the largest creditors. If any of them opposes the cancellation of the bankruptcy, it may prevent the cancellation. According to HS, the occupational pension company Varma wanted its own claims to be paid and did not support the cancellation of the bankruptcy.

HS explainedthat the bankruptcy administration or the trustee has not applied to the Helsinki District Court to cancel the bankruptcy filed on 12 January.

HS has tried to reach the entrepreneur numerous times since Monday, but has been reluctant to comment.