Wilhelm Friedrich Mittrich

Who is Wilhelm Friedrich Mittrich?

Wilhelm Friedrich Mittrich is a German entrepreneur who became notable for being the CEO of ODS, a company that was Europes largest CD & DVD Replicator until its failure in October 2007.

Around the year 2000, Mittrich was a member of the management team of Mick Fleetwood backed British online music distributor Point Group Ltd, which went bankrupt with a debt of £ 10 million when a planned public offering collapsed in the dot-com bubble of 2000. In 2004, the British government subsequently banned him from leading or founding a business in the United Kingdom for a period of four years.

According to Der Spiegel, ODS paid € 6.8 million for exclusive licenses to Hollywood's film studios. Another € 10.4 million were spent for a lawsuit on licenses. In this lawsuit ODS defended its position against a license pool that granted what ODS deemed unfair commercial advantage to certain competitors of ODS in respect to license dues. Internally held shares in the company were allegedly sold so as to further produce assets, an operation deemed worth € 23 million but no wrongdoing has ever been proven. In October 2007 the company filed for insolvency and on 29 February 2008 the Dassow plant finally stopped its production. The former management under Wilhelm Friedrich Mittrich is since being investigated by authorities for tax and subsidiary fraud and for professional patent violations but to date no proof has been forthcoming. In August 2010 the public prosecutor's office at Schwerin charged the three former managers of ODS with fraud in the order of millions. This has been one of many so far unsuccessful attempts to build such a case.