Det här är dokumentet Svenskhampa utfäste sig att publicera. Svaret återges oavkortat, i sin ursprungliga ordning och på originalspråket engelska. Ingenting är struket, sammanfattat eller omflyttat.
Redaktionens förord
Lisa Haag och Moritz Förster förelades uppgifterna i granskningen Den tyska branschen som gjorde JuicyFields möjligt den 19 augusti 2026, med svarsfrist den 26 augusti. De svarade inom fristen.
Deras svar nådde oss inte då. Svenskhampas adress `info@svenskhampa.se` saknade MX-post i domänens zon mellan den 28 maj och den 28 augusti 2026, och post som nådde servern avvisades med `554 5.7.1 Relay access denied`. Felet var vårt. Haag underrättade oss om leveransproblemet via Telegram och vidarebefordrade svaret på nytt den 2 september 2026, varefter det kom fram. Ingenting i granskningen eller här ska läsas som att de underlåtit att svara.
Fyra upplysningar hör till läsningen.
Svaret är på engelska och översätts inte. En översättning vore en redigering, och utfästelsen gällde en oredigerad återgivning. Texten står därför som den skrevs.
En uppgift är borttagen. Lisa Haags direkta mobilnummer i signaturen är struket. Det är den enda ändringen i dokumentet, och den är gjord av integritetsskäl, inte redaktionella. Hennes tjänste-e-post och bolagets adress står kvar, eftersom båda är offentliga i MJ Universe GmbH:s impressum.
Svaret innehåller uppgifter om tredje man. Delar av texten gäller personer som inte är föremål för granskningen, framför allt advokaten Lars Olofsson, och återger uppgifter som Haag och Förster i sin tur hämtar ur Svenska Dagbladets rapportering. De uppgifterna är deras, inte Svenskhampas. Svenskhampa tar inte ställning till dem och gör inga egna påståenden om dem. De berörda har inte förelagts dem här, eftersom dokumentet återges som inkommen handling.
Läsaren ska samtidigt veta att just den rapporteringen är föremål för rättslig prövning. Olofsson för en förtalstalan mot Svenska Dagbladet, mål T 16571-25, som dokumenteras på svdcase.se. Den sajten drivs av ELF LAW, som utgivaren av Svenskhampa har en roll i, vilket läsaren också ska veta. Målet är inte avgjort, och ingenting här ska läsas som ett ställningstagande i det.
Svaret innehåller frågor till Svenskhampas utgivare. De besvarades skriftligen den 3 september 2026. Det svaret återges längst ned på den här sidan, också det oavkortat, så att fråga och svar går att läsa på samma ställe.
Svaret
Följebrev vid vidarebefordran, 2 september 2026
For the record, we responded within the deadline you set. Our emails to info@svenskhampa.se were not successfully delivered because of problems on your receiving side, including a "554 5.7.1 Relay access denied" response and repeated connection timeouts. I also informed you of the delivery problem via Telegram. Frankly, if you try to issue formal press enquiries with deadlines, it is reasonable to expect that the contact address you provide is technically capable of receiving the responses. I am therefore forwarding our response once again and hope that it now reaches you. Please do not interpret, present or publish the technical failure of your own mail infrastructure as a failure on our part to respond. I also want to be clear that I will no longer simply tolerate the pattern of conduct described in our response; if false statements, material distortions or further inappropriate conduct continue, we will consider and pursue the appropriate legal and editorial consequences.
Det gemensamma svaret
Mr. Daniel Johansson,
thank you for your request. Please find below the joint response from Moritz Förster and me. Legal counsel has reviewed our response.
You requested our response by 26 August and stated expressly that it would be published in full and unedited. We are responding on that basis, and we will hold you to your word. We expect our response to be reproduced accurately, completely and in its proper context, rather than selectively quoted or combined with unrelated material in a way that changes its meaning. Given our previous experiences with you and people associated with the JuicyFields Case, including publications and communications concerning me as well as a broad range of third parties, that clarification is unfortunately necessary.
Before publishing the answers to your request, please also clarify in a quick response in what capacity you are approaching us. Is Svenskhampa a personal blog, a commercial publishing activity, an editorial publication, or a recognized press outlet? Who is the legally responsible publisher? Does Svenskhampa hold an "utgivningsbevis", meaning a Swedish publication certificate that can give a website special constitutional media protection, and if so, who is the registered "ansvarig utgivare", meaning the legally responsible editor who bears formal responsibility for published content? If you are relying on any formal press accreditation or professional press status, please identify it. We would simply like to know who is actually making this press request and under which editorial and legal responsibility.
Regarding your request:
As a general matter, we do not disclose confidential company information to private third parties simply because they request it. Commercial relationships may also be subject to confidentiality obligations and NDAs. For your specific request, however, there is no underlying commercial relationship with JuicyFields or Juicy Grow GmbH to disclose.
Neither krautinvest nor MJ Universe has ever received advertising money, sponsorship payments, consulting fees, commissions or any other remuneration from JuicyFields or Juicy Grow GmbH. No krautinvest article has ever been paid for by JuicyFields. We received advertising requests, but no business resulted from them and no advertising was published.
A recurring problem throughout your questions and previous JuicyFields Case material is guilt by association: people are linked to JuicyFields simply because they were interviewed by krautinvest, belonged to our MJ Universe collaborative network, or appeared on the same stage. Sharing a programme means an event organiser invited both people; it does not establish knowledge, participation, responsibility or any commercial relationship. For example, Moritz has been put on various panels of ICBC without being involved in the curation process or receiving direct payment.
krautinvest has covered the cannabis industry since 2017 and has worked with a very broad range of industry participants. Kai-Friedrich Niermann has contributed as a legal expert, guest author, and independent member of the MJ Universe Special Agents network. The same principle applies to Shlomo and Lauren Booklin. The Special Agents are independent professionals. MJ Universe neither directs nor controls their other professional activities outside our collaboration. Their later decisions do not retrospectively transform earlier interviews, expert contributions, or professional relationships with us into JuicyFields activities.
--> If you claim that JuicyFields actually used a particular krautinvest article, quotation, author profile or credential in its marketing, please provide the exact source and direct reference. Even then, you would still need to explain what this is supposed to establish about us. What are you implying?
Your reference to Barcelona is particularly difficult to understand. It was a non-profit industry networking event organized collaboratively by several parties and has no commercial relation to Juicy Fields in any way or form. I have organized, moderated, curated and supported many industry events over the years. The extent of our media partnerships, event collaborations and regular stage presence simply shows that Moritz and I have longstanding relationships throughout the professional cannabis-event ecosystem. That is part of our work and expertise. It does not establish a relationship with every sponsor, speaker or company appearing somewhere within the same ecosystem.
I stand by my statement that JuicyFields spent substantial amounts on sponsorship and visibility throughout the cannabis-event ecosystem. Many events accepted JuicyFields sponsorship; a smaller number did not. You are free to verify this yourself, including through the Wayback Machine, which I assume you also used for your archive research concerning krautinvest. It raises the question of why you are being so selective in your targeting.
More generally, we find it difficult to follow the logic behind several of your conclusions because the underlying facts do not support the suggested connections. In various instances, the inference appears to come first and the evidence is then assembled around it, rather than the conclusion being derived from verifiable facts. The same applies to your questions concerning imports and exports. krautinvest is a specialist industry publication with a strong focus on market data. We regularly publish official import, export and production figures, regulatory information and data obtained from authorities and other primary sources. Reliable data actually helps prevent scams and identify inconsistencies.
If somebody claims that a market is enormous, growing at an extraordinary rate or capable of producing exceptional commercial returns, market participants should be able to compare that narrative with actual import volumes, production figures, official market data and regulatory reality. Reliable primary data allow readers to see when a commercial story and measurable reality do not match. That is precisely why we consider this kind of reporting important.
Our readers are predominantly professionals from business, finance, law, regulation in and surrounding the cannabis industry. While we aim to make our content accessible to a broader audience, we also assume a reasonable degree of literacy when it comes to specialist market data and the ability to interpret figures in their proper context. From our understanding official market data is a critical instrument for all readers to enable them to judge pitches by any third party on facts and figures. Editorial content, guest-author contributions, advertising and commercial material are clearly distinguished under our editorial and marketing guidelines, including appropriate disclaimers and clear identification of sponsored content.
Regarding our JuicyFields publications, it is critical to distinguish between research, publication and publication readiness. Information has to be investigated, verified, editorially assessed, and sufficiently robust to withstand factual and legal scrutiny before it can responsibly be published. Serious allegations against an operating company cannot simply be published because suspicions exist beyond hearsay. At least that is the editorial standard we apply to our publications. krautinvest is a small independent specialist publication. We are not a major investigative newsroom with an in-house legal department and unlimited resources. At the same time, we regularly support mainstream and specialist journalists as a valid industry reference.
Our first JuicyFields reference in the regular press review for JULY 2022 appeared on 2 August 2022 and referenced, among other things, BaFin's intervention. A press review is exactly that: an aggregation of external reporting and primary sources, not an attempt to present those sources as our own investigative conclusions. The press review is regularly posted a few days after the prior month is over.
We subsequently published Michael Knodt's extensive investigation once the research was publication-ready. Michael had already been researching JuicyFields long before the collapse. His published investigation documents, among other things, include inquiries to BaFin, the Berlin police and several Dutch authorities dating back well before July 2022. All of this is properly referenced in the article published with us and on his YouTube channel.
Publication readiness is difficult and was not unique to us. Andreas Becker and Nicolas Martin subsequently explained in our krautinvest interview regarding their Deutsche Welle investigation that they had also researched JuicyFields before the collapse and spent considerable time checking data, facts and documents before their work became publication-ready. Moritz also addressed our responsibility openly immediately after the collapse: "As an industry publication, krautinvest should also have warned about the fraudulent model earlier. Looking back, this is something we have to acknowledge." We did not avoid that question. We raised it ourselves. However, we lacked the necessary resources to investigate such a complex story within our constrained timeframe and legal capacities. Once Michael Knodt's extensive research was ready to publish from a legal and journalistic perspective, we made it accessible to the public after there were already many publications out covering different aspects.
This makes your present question about which journalist and which article we mean particularly strange. You know this very well. You personally wrote publicly to Michael under the YouTube video: "I do apologize for copy-pasting your article on our website." I explained everything (including proof) in the video already, but allow me to explain it again: krautinvest commissioned and paid for Michael's article and held the relevant first-publication rights. Meaning I paid Michael a small fee compared to the many of hours of research he put into this and so it was not a total loss for him. The article was reproduced through your publication environment without prior permission and for a commercial purpose. (Commercial since the term "clients" was used quite explicitly across the Juicyfields Case communication.) You were not willing to discuss secondary use terms (which would have translated into a small fee that would have gone 100% to the author) and I was confronted with what I would classify as the first threats in this interaction. You then edited the publication to a reference.
We chose not to invoice you or pursue legal action after the copied material was removed and replaced with a reference to the original. Your statement below confirms in addition that you know precisely which article was being discussed. Apparently, you also considered our editorial work sufficiently useful to reproduce it, even without permission.
The chronology after that is also relevant. After I asserted krautinvest's publication rights on behalf of our author, the tone of the communications became increasingly adversarial, and I experienced parts of the subsequent conduct as harassing. Despite this, you later approached us asking whether JuicyFields Case could receive visibility through krautinvest. We have retained those requests, the correspondence, screenshots and plenty of material in the broader chronology.
Your renewed contact has now caused us to review whether an editorial update concerning the subsequent JuicyFields Case activities and the structures that have developed around them is needed. Your request has therefore triggered several questions for a potential future publication. We are putting those questions to you now, with a view to possible publication and with a full opportunity for you to respond.
Let me assure you that if we proceed, the work will be prepared according to standards applied: verifiable primary material, documented sources, appropriate right of reply, and legal review. We will distinguish clearly between facts, reasonable conclusions, and matters that cannot be verified. That is what we understand responsible journalism to require.
A. How do you assess your own JuicyFields involvement under the same retrospective standard you now apply to everybody else?
You were not an external observer. According to your account as reported by Svenska Dagbladet, you lost approximately SEK 1.5 million and introduced around twenty acquaintances to JuicyFields. JuicyFields itself also used referral bonuses for investors who brought additional people into the platform. You were therefore substantially closer to JuicyFields than either krautinvest or MJ Universe ever was.
1. When did you personally first identify serious warning signs?
2. Were you warned before the collapse? If so, by whom and when, and what did you do with that information?
3. Did you recognize that something was wrong before the collapse, or did the collapse take you completely by surprise?
4. How many people did you introduce directly or indirectly, and did you receive referral bonuses, commissions, account credits or other financial or non-financial benefits connected to those introductions?
5. Please also distinguish, as far as possible, between actual capital deposited, purported platform profits and any referral-related amounts included in the publicly reported value of your JuicyFields position.
6. While JuicyFields was still active, would you have described yourself as a JuicyFields "evangelist", meaning someone who actively believed in, promoted and encouraged others to participate in the platform?
7. If you were yourself an engaged investor, financially committed and bringing other people into JuicyFields, why do you now expect unrelated journalists, event organizers, and industry professionals to have understood the fraud better than you did at the time?
8. Did you warn anybody personally before July 2022?
9. Were the warning signs really obvious to you then, or are they appearing obvious now because you know how the story ended?
B. What is your current operational and economic relationship with the structure that continues to operate around the JuicyFieldsCase?
Given the level of scrutiny you apply to everybody else's historic relationships, the same degree of transparency concerning your personal publishing, commercial and corporate relationships seems entirely reasonable.
Independent investigative reporting by Svenska Dagbladet has raised serious questions about the post-JuicyFields recovery and litigation environment. Among other things, SvD reported that a central figure in that operation claimed approximately 6,000 clients paying entry fees of €100–150, which SvD estimated could amount to almost SEK 10 million in entry-fee revenue alone. SvD also reported previous economic-crime convictions, significant outstanding debts, questions concerning claimed professional experience and a 2024 court decision refusing that person permission to represent clients in litigation against Facebook because sufficient information concerning the proposed representative's legal experience was missing. Deutsche Welle subsequently reported independently on the €100–150 fees and the participation of several thousand JuicyFields victims. Several matters I had independently identified were later also examined and reported on by professional investigative journalists.
You have publicly acknowledged that you founded JuicyFields Case and were involved in building its publishing structure. The website remains online today and identifies Eight Legged Forensics as its publisher. Official Nevada corporate records identify you as an active manager of Eight Legged Forensics LLC.
Public Swedish company information also identifies you as a deputy board member (styrelsesuppleant) of Prio Startup AB. Public company information currently identifies another person as the beneficial owner controlling 100% of Prio Startup AB. This is relevant because Prio Startup formed part of the wider organizational environment surrounding the post-JuicyFields recovery activities and therefore raises an additional question about your role in that structure.
This is also particularly relevant because JuicyFields Case continues to publish allegations concerning third parties that appear substantially more accusatory than the limited position you now articulate in your present press request.
C. Please explain your full operational and economic role across Prio Startup AB, JuicyFields Case, Eight Legged Forensics LLC, ELF LAW and RepScam.
1. What was and is your formal role in each structure, what responsibilities did or do you exercise, do you hold any direct or indirect ownership, beneficial interest, revenue share or other economic rights, and have you received salaries, fees, commissions, reimbursements or any other financial benefit from these activities?
2. In particular, what role did you personally play in Prio Startup AB and in the recruitment, onboarding or administration of JuicyFields victims?
3. Did you personally benefit financially, directly or indirectly, from the post-JuicyFields recovery and litigation activities?
4. Were you entitled to any portion of the €100–150 participation fees, referral income, legal or recovery fees, investigation fees, client revenues or other payments generated from the thousands of victims who joined these initiatives? If not, please clarify how these revenues were allocated and which individuals or entities ultimately received them.
5. What concrete results have these paid recovery activities actually achieved for the victims to date?
6. How many clients have recovered funds as a direct result of the legal, recovery or representation services offered through these structures?
7. What total amount has actually been returned to clients, how many claims related to any of scamfunds you are retrieving have resulted in enforceable judgments, settlements or successful bank recoveries, and what proportion of the clients who paid fees have received any financial recovery?
8. You have also referred in your apology to Michael that the Meta litigation as unsuccessful. Against that background, what measurable outcomes support the continued marketing of these recovery and representation services?
9. You now expressly state that you are not alleging that I worked for JuicyFields or knew about the fraud. Earlier JuicyFields Case publications created a materially different impression. Do you continue to stand behind those earlier allegations? If yes, please provide the evidence. If not, why do those allegations remain publicly available on a website that you founded and that continues to be operated through a corporate structure in which you hold an official management position?
FYI: I have copied the Swedish journalists responsible for the earlier investigative reporting for transparency and because the newly visible corporate structures, including Eight Legged Forensics LLC and your continuing formal involvement, may be relevant to their work.
3. Why has your focus on me developed into what I experience as repeated harassment and fixation?
For years, I have experienced conduct toward me and people in my professional network that I have perceived as harassment, including repeated allegations, publications and, at one professional event, being followed at close distance during an event. There are witnesses and contemporaneous documentation. Whatever the intention, the cumulative effect has caused significant professional and personal harm and has repeatedly forced me to spend time and resources reacting to allegations that I consider unfounded.
So I would like to ask two simple questions:
1. Why this renewed and persistent focus on me, and what is it that you are actually trying to establish?
2. Where do you personally draw the line between legitimate journalistic scrutiny and a sustained campaign against an individual?
Your question regarding my deceased cat is perhaps the clearest example of how you interpret hearsay. I never made the statement you attribute to me in relation to your person. How is this even relevant?
I will leave you with one simple question: if you examined your conduct and behavior as critically as you examine everyone else's, what story would the facts tell about you?
You requested our response by 26 August. We are providing it within your deadline. You stated that it would be published in full and unedited, and we will hold you to that commitment.
We expect your complete answers to the questions above, together with the underlying source material requested in this response, by 4 September 2026, 18:00 CET.
If our response is selectively quoted, altered, stripped of context, or used to create a materially false impression despite the information supplied to you in advance, we will take appropriate legal steps in relevant jurisdictions. We also expressly reserve the right to publish your request, this response, the correspondence, screenshots, primary records, and relevant chronology throughout our channels. We have retained extensive contemporaneous documentation accumulated over several years.
Best regards,
Lisa Haag & Moritz Förster
P.S. As it regards Shlomo and Lauren, I will not provide you with their private information and I will not forward your request to them.
Links & Sources:
- `krautinvest.de/chronik-eines-scams-die-juicy-fields-story/`
- `krautinvest.de/andreas-becker-und-nicolas-martin-ueber-juicyfields-ausgedachtes-universum/`
- `krautinvest.de/juicy-fields-wie-konnte-es-soweit-kommen/`
- `krautinvest.de/cannabiz-die-news-im-juli/`
- `svd.se/a/qPQolo/daniel-forlorat-1-5-miljon-kronor-i-juicy-fields`
- `dw.com/en/juicyfields-locks-users-out-of-cannabis-investments-is-this-the-next-exit-scam/a-62556087`
- `svd.se/a/bmjLO3/juicy-fields-lawyer-lars-olofsson-double-dealings-exposed`
- `dw.com/en/new-revelations-in-juicyfields-cannabis-scam/a-70940012`
- `esos.nv.gov/EntitySearch/OnlineEntitySearch` — Nevada Secretary of State, official Business Entity Search; search for Eight Legged Forensics LLC or Entity No. E44653472024-2.
- `foretagsinfo.bolagsverket.se/sok-foretagsinformation-web/foretag` — Bolagsverket, official Swedish company register; search for Prio Startup AB or organisation number 559123-0411.
- `ratsit.se/5591230411-Prio_Startup_AB` — directly shows Daniel Leander Gottfried Johansson as Styrelsesuppleant and Lars Jörgen Olofsson as 100% beneficial owner.
- `bolagsfakta.se/5591230411-Prio_Startup_AB` — additional company-data record based on Swedish registry information, including Daniel's board role and beneficial ownership information.
Lisa Haag
Geschäftsführerin (CEO)
l_haag@mjuniverse.net
[direktnummer struket av redaktionen]
MJ Universe GmbH
Novalisstr. 14
10115 Berlin
Germany
www.mjuniverse.net
"Let's unlock the full potential of hemp and cannabis"
I work on a flexible work schedule and across several time zones. Therefore, I sometimes send emails out of hours. I do not expect you to do so.
Confidentiality Note: This message is intended only for the use of the named recipient(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete the message. Any unauthorized use of the information contained in this message is prohibited.
Svenskhampas svar, 3 september 2026
Utgivarens svar på brevet ovan, återgivet i sin helhet och på originalspråket. Det skickades till båda mottagarna den 3 september 2026, inom den frist de satte.
Dear Ms Haag, dear Mr Förster,
Thank you for your response. I confirm receipt, and I confirm without qualification that you answered within the deadline I set. Nothing that follows should be read as disputing that.
The delivery failure was ours
You are right, and I am not going to soften it.
Our address info@svenskhampa.se could not reliably receive mail. Two separate faults were involved: the domain had no MX record in our DNS zone between 28 May and 28 August 2026, and mail that did reach the server was met with 554 5.7.1 Relay access denied. Your reply, and any reply from anyone else during that period, had nowhere to arrive.
I set a deadline on a contact address that could not receive the answer. That is my fault and no one else's, and I apologise for it.
I also want to acknowledge something separately. You told me about the delivery problem on Telegram. That message is the only reason I knew about it at all, and I am grateful for it. I was ill when it arrived, and as soon as I was able I had the address repaired and reissued every request. You did me a courtesy there, and I would rather say so than let it pass unremarked.
Your response will not be presented, characterised or published as a failure on your part to reply. On the contrary: where this appears in the published article, it will say that you answered within the deadline and that the fault was on our side. You may hold me to that in writing, and this letter is that writing.
The address has since been repaired and tested. All requests have been reissued, with 9 September 2026 as the new deadline for everyone.
The questions you asked about who we are
You are entitled to these answers, and here they are.
What Svenskhampa is. It is my own publication. I write it, I publish it, I pay for it. It is not a personal blog in the sense of a diary, and it is not a commercial publishing operation with staff and revenue. It is an independent specialist publication run by one person.
Utgivningsbevis. Svenskhampa does not hold a Swedish publication certificate.
Ansvarig utgivare. It follows that there is no ansvarig utgivare in the formal constitutional sense, because that office exists only where a publication certificate has been granted. I am the publisher, and I am personally responsible for everything published, under ordinary Swedish law and without the protection a certificate would confer. If you consider something published to be unlawful, your counterpart is me as a private individual.
Press accreditation. I claim none and never have. I do not present myself as holding professional press status.
What I commit to on publication
The commitment stands: your response is published in full and unedited.
Because it runs to several thousand words, publishing it inside the running text would make both the article and your answer unreadable. It will therefore appear as a separate document at its own address, complete and unaltered, linked from every point in the article where either of you is mentioned. The substance will additionally be worked into the relevant sections. Nothing will be cut, summarised in place of the original, or paraphrased in a way that stands instead of your words.
That includes the parts of your response that concern me. I am not filtering the criticism directed at me.
Two consequences you should know about now:
The article records that a colleague of yours told us you had said certain things about me, including a claim about a threat to your cats. The passage stays, and your denial is published with it. The article already undertook that your answer would be carried, and it will be. Since you address the point in your own response, your words on it will stand beside the account.
Your explanation of the Knodt article, that krautinvest commissioned and paid for it and held first-publication rights, answers a question the article puts, and it will be recorded as your answer.
On forwarding to the Booklins
I note your refusal and accept it as your decision. The article will record only that we asked and that the request was declined, without characterising the refusal.
Your questions to me
Have I profited. No. Not one krona, from JuicyFields or from anything done since. No salary, no fee, no commission, no referral bonus, no share of any participation fee, no revenue from any recovery or litigation activity.
Referral bonuses in particular. I received none, and was never paid under any such scheme.
Recovery results. I cannot give you figures, and I am not going to invent any. The litigation has not reached a stage where recovery figures exist, and where the article touches this it will say that no figures have been established rather than imply that any exist.
There is separate litigation pending in Stockholm concerning reporting about counsel in these matters. It is before the court and I will not argue it in correspondence. It is relevant here only in that it has to be resolved before the underlying claims can proceed, which is a matter of sequence, not of outcome.
The corporate roles you cite. Both are correct and I confirm them without reservation. I am a deputy board member, styrelsesuppleant, of Prio Startup AB, and I am a manager of Eight Legged Forensics LLC. You found both in public registers.
Two things belong with that confirmation. A styrelsesuppleant under Swedish law is a stand-in who acts only if an ordinary board member is unable to serve; it is not an executive office, it is required to have one by law. And I hold no ownership in Prio Startup AB. The beneficial owner is another person, as the register entry you cite shows. Neither role has produced any income for me, as set out above. I volunteered for it as noone else dared to put their name on the entity that intended pursue legal actions connected to a fraud by the Russian mafia/state.
When I first saw warning signs, and why I stayed.
The first thing that troubled me was the banking. The company used a bank in Cyprus, which I thought odd. The explanation I was given was that no other bank would open an account for a cannabis company. At the time that struck me as plausible, because it matched what everyone in the sector said about banking access. I remained sceptical, and I had put in only a small amount.
What changed my assessment was the webinar. JuicyFields said it was selling into the German market. On the speaker card sat a lawyer presented as legal advisor to the European Industrial Hemp Association, a man who had co-authored a report on German cannabis regulation with the person who shortly afterwards became the federal government's drug commissioner. For me that was one plus one. If that lawyer stood there, the German market claim had to be real.
I understood it was not true two days after the exit.
So the honest answer to your question is that I did not see through it. I was taken in, and the thing that took me in was precisely the credibility that people in this industry lent the company. That is not a rhetorical point against you. It is why the article exists, and it is why I do not write that anyone knew. What I write is what was documented, and what standing was lent, because I know from the inside what that standing was worth to someone deciding whether to believe them.
You ask why I expect others to have understood better than I did. I do not. The article does not say that anyone should have known it was a fraud. It says what the arithmetic was, that it was public, and that it was the professional subject matter of some of those involved. Whether that amounts to anything is for the reader to judge, and your answer stands beside it.
On focus and proportion. You ask why the focus on you, and where I draw the line.
On the number of approaches. I have written to you twice, both times as formal requests for comment before publication, the second only because the first could not be answered. Beyond that, what exists between us is correspondence on Telegram and LinkedIn, which you hold and I hold. There is no campaign of contact, and the record will show its extent whichever of us produces it.
On being followed at an event. I have never met you. I have never been in your presence, been introduced to you, or seen you in person. That includes 29 June 2023 in Berlin. My ticket to that conference had been refunded shortly before it opened. Flights and hotel were already booked, so I travelled anyway and spent the day in the hotel lobby. I did not enter the conference. Whatever happened at the event you describe, it was not me. If you believe otherwise, tell me the event and the date and I will account for where I was.
On selectivity. This article names nine parties: Kai-Friedrich Niermann, Lauren and Shlomo Booklin, Alex Rogers, Michael Knodt, Moritz Förster, Luc Richner, Finn Age Hänsel and the firm Dentons. Every one received a request for comment on the same day, with the same deadline, on the same terms. You are one of nine, not a target among bystanders. That is checkable, and I invite you to check it.
On juicyfieldscase.com. I stand behind the decision to publish what is there, and it stays up. This article applies a narrower evidentiary standard than that site does, and where material cannot meet the standard I set here, I leave it out rather than carry it across. That is why the article does not repeat the parts resting on anonymous accounts, and it says so in the text. A different threshold for a different publication is not a disavowal of either.
On where the line runs. Scrutiny attaches to a documented act, and it stops when the act has been described and answered. A campaign attaches to a person and continues regardless of what they answer. My test is whether I can point to the document, and whether I would publish your answer even where it damages my own account. I have undertaken to publish yours in full, including the parts about me, and I will.
One thing I will not concede
You describe the method as guilt by association. The article addresses that in terms, repeatedly and in writing: that moderating a panel is not vouching for those on it, that a like is not a connection, that appearing on a consultant listing is not blameworthy, and that sponsorship and shared stages are something other than employment.
Where you tell me a fact is wrong, I correct it. Where we disagree about what documented facts mean, I publish your reading alongside mine and let the reader decide. That is the whole of my position.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Johansson
Publisher, Svenskhampa
info@svenskhampa.se
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