J.J. Darboven

So even the banks are reluctant sometimes to give them.

It's really funny you say that because I have been thinking since we've been doing all of this Beneke and Darboven stuff, I've been thinking that how complicated this whole everything to do with coffee on the origin side is and non-standardised and nobody really tries and helps producers understand how everything works against them.

There's no standardised contracts.

Nothing is really like encouraged for them to protect themselves and this sounds like another one of those things where if you do try and protect yourself then it makes it difficult for you to get money from the bank like another problem for farmers but we're going to talk about that kind of stuff in I'm going to work really hard to bring people who can explain that stuff onto the podcast to give people more access to that information now Folks, I want you to know that you will see on your screen and you will see in the show notes that there are two links.

Uh, there is a lot more that's coming forward, but as we've explored through this series, giving you a recap of everything and sharing my ideas and opinions and thoughts and, you know, where I think this is at, in this episode, I wanna go deep into what are the things that don't add up.

What I can tell you is from all the people who have contacted us, the, who, who are involved in this, whether it's JJ Darboven or it's Fairtrade or it's Beneci or it's the cooperatives, um, or it's brokers and et cetera, et cetera, just because people say, "We did everything right," in my opinion, that's not the whole fucking story.

If there's anything that I have walked away from this such situation thinking is we need to change coffee, and we need to find a way to make direct trade, responsible direct trade, where the people buying the coffee a- are very clear that they can pay their bills.

The more we can do that without intermediaries, and on a much smaller scale than what's going on, I think we are going to inject a lot more responsibility into the coffee supply chain.

Fairtrade knew about the issue with the prepayments in June of 2025.

Flowcert, their auditing, um, business, audited Beneci in August, said, "Nah, everything's fine here." A later investigation by Flowcert found major non-conformities, and then they decertified them, but that didn't happen until May the next year, well after Beneci had filed for insolvency.

JJ Darboven confirms that Beneci was its supplier and says it paid all Beneci invoices from tw- in 2025 on time, and the producer organizations are still pursuing recovery.

Okay? So that's all the stuff that we know and we think adds up.

So w- this leads us to another thing.

I wanna understand what the connection is between JJ Darboven and these brokers.

Why? Well, because an allegation has been made that one of the brokers was not acting on behalf of Benecke, they were acting on behalf of JJ Darboven.

Now, that is still not confirmed and not corroborated by us.

It was corroborated by somebody else, and they have given me permission to use their name, but I have decided not to because of the threats that have been coming thick and fast from different brokers.

Um, but we have been told that that was as... an established situation that happened very recently, after the series aired.

Okay? So I don't know if that's true, but I would like to understand what the connection is between JJ Darboven and these brokers, because what was told to us is that these brokers received commission from the Peruvian cooperatives, from Benecke, and from JJ Darboven.

So that is a question that I think we all need to understand, because it's pretty clear that the brokers aren't acting independently.

And I have said this before, it is my opinion that we are looking at that the wrong way.

We should be looking at the coffee industry as the difference between the corporates, like Beneci, like JJ Darboven, and the independents.

The independents being the coffee farmers, the coffee roasters, the cafes, the cooperatives.

Not all cooperatives, there are some really big cooperatives, but we need to be looking at the, at separating our industry out this way.

They're not proactively going out and saying to their members, their cert- the people who pay for these certifications, "Hey, we know you do business with Benecke, and we want you to know that they have been de-certified." They do not do that from everything that they have explained to us, okay? So in fairness to them, one thing that they do know is that they have acknowledged that they need to consider an earlier warning system after this series.

They, and I can assure you, they watched both the series, and they sent us two press releases related to, to each of those.

Now, what did JJ Darboven know? So we know that Benecke was a supplier and that Ben- that JJ Darboven said that it paid all of its invoices on time.

They were very clear to say that they paid it on time, and it says that it's been in close contact with the insolvency administrator.

And I think this brings in a central question into all of our consciousness.

How the fuck did this happen, and how often is it happening? And I can tell you from the amount of people that have contacted me and said, "I wanna share a story with you of how this is happening," or, "I wanna point you to a situation where this happened in another country with Benecke or with JJ Darboven, or with a whole bunch of...

Neumann, with a whole bunch of other situations." And they're coming with receipts.

They're coming with contracts.

Urubiki says that it continued shipments after the payments were being made, but they said that Benecke reassured them many times that the payments were coming.

And the San Cherrio P- Palomar, uh, Cooperative, they say that the Benecke payments were already unusually slo- slow in 2025, and Clemens von Storch encouraged them to keep making those, uh, fulfilling those contracts even though the money wasn't flowing.

Right? Now, the money rem-- did not end up flowing back, even though JJ Darboven kept saying that they have paid all of their contracts.

So what we wanna ask ourselves is when Benecke, when did Benecke receive payment from the p- specifically the Peruvian contracts, and why have those remained unpaid? So if Benecke has been paid for the coffee, why haven't the brokers...