Elise Fraley
“ZDF Magazin Royale”
‘Take full responsibility’: Here’s what Finn Kleiman has to say about Jan Böhmermann’s allegations
Finn Kleiman on his farm “Clemenceland”
© Hauke-Christian Dittrich / / Picture Alliance
Distribute Asian masks as European masks and donate inferior products to refugees: Jan Böhmermann’s allegations against Finn Kleiman are harsh. Now the accused replied.
Jan Boehmermann has already posted a contribution to “ZDF Magazin Royale” in advance, which will be broadcast on ZDF on Friday evening. In it, the broker deals with the business behavior of Fynn Kliemann. The allegations are fierce: The artist and entrepreneur, with his business partner Tom Elbrook, has relabeled the masks that were made in Bangladesh and Vietnam to dump wages and then resold as fair and made in Portugal. He also “donated” 100,000 defective masks from Bangladesh to refugee shelters in Bosnia and Greece.
Difficult things, to which the accused now responds in a long statement: “I would like to formally apologize to all the people, organizations and institutions who are now disappointed and shocked ‘at first sight””, the 34-year-old begins: a letter page responding to the contribution of ‘ZDF Magazin’ Royale. Kleiman puts the words “at first sight” in quotation marks because he feels put in a bad light. He claims that “these allegations of fraud are not true”.
He said he never sold or advertised the masks made in Bangladesh. “The masks were only shown at www.maskeoderso.de and these masks came 100 per cent from Portugal and Serbia.” The masks in question were a wholesale kit to trading partners and wholesale buyers and were only sold to them. All buyers of these masks have been informed in advance of the country of origin.
Finn Kleiman wants to take responsibility
Kleiman describes emails in which his business partner Tom Elbrook wrote about “relabeling” the masks as “bad,” and rightly criticizes the wording. The artist and entrepreneur tries to explain that he did not notice it at the time by saying that he was confused at the time: “I must admit that I cannot continue the process anymore.” He bears responsibility for that.
On the other hand, Kleiman rejects Boomermann’s accusation that the masks were produced under wage dumping: “Global Tactics paid exactly the same production costs for the masks as in Serbia: 40 cents per mask.”
The man from Lower Saxony explains: “Yes, I made money selling European masks through my shop. But as far as the country of origin, I’ve never cheated anyone or spent anything on something that wasn’t.”
Faulty masks in refugee camps?
The worst hit was the accusation that he had given defective masks to the refugee camps. Kleiman puts it this way: “According to the producers, these masks were not defective or had a poor protective effect. They were slightly larger than the original specifications,” he continues.
“ZDF Magazin Royale” contradicts this on one hand Twitter thread. “The masks were ‘single layer instead of double layer,'” she says, “very, very thin, even for low demands on the infection protection effect. The elastics of the masks were of different lengths and colors, and the seams came apart very easily.”
Clement’s remorse can be clearly seen in the statement. He wanted “to apologize to everyone who has followed me for a long time and has absolute confidence in my work.” And he wants to draw conclusions from the case: “In the future I will check all strings, elements, processes and operations more thoroughly, and I will only do what I already have at 100%.”
In conclusion, he wrote: “I am convinced that I want to continue to positively shape society and the world around me, and in particular, I want to improve it.” That could be difficult, at least in the near future. Because the allegations are heavy, and Fynn Kliemann hasn’t been able to clear them all yet.
The sources used: Youtube.com/ZDFMagazinRoyaleAnd LMAAFK.deAnd Twitter
