NEM Group is a privately owned profit company?

[teuthis]

I have been away for a while and have come to see that POI voting is gone and NEM/Symbol is operated by NEM Group, which is a private company with undisclosed shareholders? Is that true?

It looks like there is now no means for the community to make decisions with NEM. And no means to hold anyone accountable. And no disclosure of financials.

The potential for abuse and conflict of interest is bad. The ANONYMOUS core team controls billions of XEM supposedly held for the public benefit of NEM. And it is not all the same core team people as it used to be. And there is no disclosure if any of them may also be NEM Group owners who will gain if those XEM are used for the private profits of the company. Maybe they are all perfectly honourable but we will never know because there is no community oversight.

It’s painful to think about the beginning when the idea of NEM was free and fair distribution and transparency. How can today’s NEM still call themself as community driven? How is this any different from a company controlled token like Ripple Labs or Block.one EOS? Did everyone else already know this and I am the only one who was suprised?

Are any core team members or NEM Trust or NEM Group willing to step forward and state the amount of shares they own and how much public XEM has been put into their company?

[eddy]

I don’t know what you’re really accusing Nem’s team of, every day I’m more surprised with the nem team, if it’s true what you say I find it incredible. Get reliable information to make such a statement.

[DaveH]

Welcome back, there is probably a bit to catch up from and from the activity it looks like its been a couple of years since your last post, good to see you coming back. I’ll try and link some useful things that may help fill the gaps.

1. The original announcement: NEM Ecosystem - Future Governance and Plans

2. Post on the funding: NEM Ecosystem Funding

Those two cover quite a few of the points, couple of ones highlighted below specifically as well.

which is a private company with undisclosed shareholders? Is that true?

It is a private company with no shareholders and the post in point 1 above shows the structure and was disclosed publicly ~7 months ago, a couple of explanatory points below

• Every company that is not listed on a Stock Exchange is a private company, it is not listed so yes it is private by definition…because it is not public. NEM Foundation was also private for example as are almost all non-listed crypto or blockchain companies/foundations, I can only think of a handful - Coinbase looks like it may be the first main Public Company
• The company has no shareholders, because it has no shares - it is a Company Limited by Guarantee. That means it has a what is called a Beneficial Owner (similar to the NF structure) not a Shareholder structure.
• The only Beneficial Owner of the NEM Group Ltd is NEM Group Trust, that means the only place any funds can go is to a trust that exists for the good of the NEM project/ecosystem/community

no disclosure of financials

See post linked above for the disclosure, the legal registration is also in a jurisdiction where financials must be filed with the registrar and are available to the public - same as they were in Singapore for NEM Foundation and Gibraltar for the others. Also common to most developed jurisdictions for private companies

there is no disclosure if any of them may also be NEM Group owners

See above, there are no “owners” of NEM Group, the same as there weren’t for NEM Foundation. The ownership of companies/beneficial control is also public information in Gibraltar on the Company Register, as it is in Singapore.

In terms of the Core Team role in the ecosystem, that remains the same as before and as it has been since before the first legal entity (NEM Foundation + Trust) was formed it hasn’t changed. What has changed is that some of the Core Team have now formally assumed Non Executive Director roles so there is now more detailed scrutiny by Core inside the entity and involvement at board meetings etc than previously.

[teuthis]

Thanks for links and details. I am glad to see I was mis-informed about owners being able to sell shares of NEM Group for profit. Apologies for that mistake.
I still confuse about how and why community oversight and voting has been abolished. Who has taken away the community’s ability to oversee funds shall be spent responsibly and vote on leadership roles?

I don’t believe the community voted to give up their voting rights. Which specific persons decided the community would no longer have voting?
It sounds like it is the core team, but again, they are anonymous. Nobody knows how many they are, what are their rules, or whether they are in conflict of interest. Are core team members serving for a short term or for their whole life? Has core team ever released any documents about their operations? If they have completely taken over oversight from the community, how can we know nothing about them?