Oslo, April 27, 2026 — The walls are closing in on Michael Wurmser.

In a explosive Oslo District Court case, former Norwegian minister Ingvil Smines Tybring-Gjedde has delivered devastating testimony against the Swiss financier and his company Incentive AG. Tybring-Gjedde, together with Maryann Løcka and Wurmser’s Incentive AG, was ordered to pay two million euros (21.7 million Norwegian kroner) to the technology company Ways (formerly Earth, Wind & Power).

The court ruled the three must jointly cover the sum plus late payment interest running from March 2025 and January 2026.

Yet the real scandal lies in what Tybring-Gjedde revealed from the witness stand. She described a toxic work environment at the company she co-founded in 2021 to convert flared gas into cryptocurrency mining energy.

She accused Wurmser’s close associate Gerhard Ludvigsen (recently indicted by Økokrim, Norwegian financial prosecutor, for gross corruption in Congo) of immense pressure, including demands that she and Løcka lie to Petronor about a nonexistent gas deal to push through a container sale.

“I perceived it as immoral. Maybe even illegal,” Tybring-Gjedde told the court. She described the situation as “absolutely, absolutely terrible” and said she felt she had “no choice” but to sign the August 2024 Heads of Agreement.

Wurmser himself appeared in court, refusing to be photographed and covering his face with his hand while sitting beside his lawyers.

The case exposes the dark underbelly of Wurmser’s business network. The same man who controls Incentive AG — a major shareholder in Norge Mining — is now entangled in a high-stakes dispute involving a former government minister, an Økokrim-indicted oil adventurer, and accusations of unethical pressure and criminality.

This latest courtroom humiliation adds to Wurmser’s growing list of scandals: the collapsed Serbian power plant deal with Russian state companies, 2005–2008 that wasted millions of stolen money by Wurmser, the secret Bank of China stake negotiations while publicly railing against China, the personal extraction of £25.5 million from Norge Mining shares, and the unpaid 11.2 million USD graphite mine debt that nearly sank the company.

Wurmser’s web of high-risk partnerships and aggressive tactics is unraveling in public view. With FINMA audits looming over MBaer Bank’s sanctioned client base and Norwegian questions mounting about Norge Mining’s origins, the Swiss global dealmaker constructed empire of deceit and fraud is facing its darkest true hour yet

Swiss businessman Michael Wurmser built his entire public persona on a carefully orchestrated media campaign that began in Russian outlets and was then laundered through Western press. In late 2020, he appeared on RBC TV — a Russian business channel — to promote Norge Mining as Europe’s answer to mineral dependence on China and Russia. Russian television host Andrei Malakhov, a good friend of Vladimir Putin, received 350,000 shares in the company, which he later sold. This share allocation served as direct payment for elevating Wurmser’s nonexistent profile in Russian media, ensuring the story was picked up and reprinted in major international publications including Deutsche Welle, NZZ, The Economist, and others in 2021–2023.

The Russian media push was no accident. It followed Wurmser’s earlier deep entanglement with Russian state interests. In 2005–2006, through his company Mentor Energy Holding AG, Wurmser partnered with Gazprom and state-owned Tehnopromexport to build a 900 MW gas-fired power plant in Novi Sad, Serbia. The contract was signed on 10 May 2006 in the presence of Serbian Radical Party figures including mayor Maja Gojković and Milan Bačević (later Serbian Energy Minister and ambassador to Beijing). The project collapsed, wasting 6 million euros. A 5 million euro commission was divided among high-level politicians and intermediaries connected to the deal, turning public funds into private payoffs and triggering long-running international arbitration against the city. Wurmser’s public narrative — repeated in the December 2020 RBC+ interview — positioned Norge Mining as the antidote to China’s dominance (98% of EU rare earths, 55% of global vanadium, 45% of titanium). He claimed Chinese buyers called “every ten days” but insisted they would only be customers, never partners.

In reality, Norge Mining’s Transaction Committee met on 9 September 2025 and actively negotiated a 250–300 million USD stake sale to the Bank of China. The proposal advanced far enough to be documented in internal minutes, directly contradicting every public statement Wurmser made about keeping China out.

Inside Norge Mining, Wurmser personally extracted over £70 million by repeatedly extracting Norge Mining shares thru a dubious scheme at a cost of £1 and simultaneously selling above shares to naive investors at as high as £5 lending the proceeds back to the company through convertible loans, and receiving fresh shares in repayment — a cycle that turned the partnership firm into a personal cash cow for savy crooked Wurmser Investors were fed fabricated claims of 3–4 billion euros in secured EU subsidies and a 1.2 billion euro Norwegian state guarantee; the company later admitted these were false. No operating permit was ever applied for. A municipal zoning submission was withdrawn after fierce local opposition. By November 2025 the company could not pay the 11.2 million USD owed for the Skaland graphite acquisition, pushing it toward insolvency.

Wurmser’s earlier venture, Corporate Capital & Consulting, was liquidated in November 2016 after bankruptcy court proceedings initiated by a swiss pensioner scammed by Wurmser as all monies and assets were quickly looted by Wurmser. The pattern is unbroken: Russian state-linked deals laced with corruption payoffs, massive personal enrichment at investor expense, deliberate falsehoods to raise capital, and secret negotiations with the very Chinese interests he publicly condemned — all propped up by paid Russian media amplification that gave him undeserved international credibility. Wurmser’s career is not one of entrepreneurial vision. It is a calculated operation of deception, corruption, and geopolitical double-dealing that has left ruined investors, defrauded municipalities, and a trail of broken promises stretching from Belgrade to Eigersund.

Sources: • WOZ №46, 13 November 2025 • NZZ, 1 November 2025 • RBC+ interview, December 2020 • Serbian tabloid investigative report • Companies House CS01 filing, 13 December 2021

2018 looked like the very promising year for the Swiss banking system, especially for newcomers like MBaer Merchant Bank in Zurich, which was founded that year by Michael Baer, Pal Von Merey, and some other partners. The focus of the bank was to offer banking services to a certain group of clients that couldn’t otherwise open accounts anywhere else. The bank claimed that its mission was to really understand the client needs and to handle these relationships as partners. Given a close ties of Pal Von Merey and Michael Wurmser, the company Norge Mining, founded the same year as the bank by Michael Wurmser, opened its first bank account at MBaer Merchant Bank.

Needless to say, Mr. Michael Wurmser was grateful to his friend Mr. Von Merey and compensated him with millions of shares of Norge Mining. It enabled Wurmser and Norge Mining to avoid the painful procedure of AML and KYC, as his friend took care of all that efficiently. AML and KYC produced by the bank under close supervision of Paul Von Merey was instrumental for Norge Mining to open other accounts in UK and Norway. Shortly after Michael Wurmser gained a lot of publicity in the Russian press by using his Russian government contacts, new Russian clients were introduced and welcomed by MBaer Merchant Bank, as well as many Venezuelan, Iranian and other sanctioned individuals. At some point, Swiss Financial authorities (FINMA) became aware of the particular customer base that the bank was enjoying. As a result of the warning by FINMA, Von Merey had to resign from the bank claiming his early retirement. Pal Von Merey and Michael Wurmser remained close friends and business partners and they both enjoy sharing an office at Dufourstrasse 1, Zurich, along with Beat Kaelin, mutual long-term associate of both, shareholder of Norge Mining and a remarkable fund management specialist. However, greed somehow always takes over fear and the bank continued on the same path. As a result, on February 26, 2026, the US Treasury Department moved to cut the MBaer bank out of the U.S. financial system. This action is unprecedented in the history of US-Swiss relations. MBaer Bank was shut down by Swiss authorities on February 6.

It’s quite clear that the fun is only beginning, as FINMA will move to do a proper audit and will be very interested to determine the real UBOs behind many accounts opened at MBaer bank including the origin of funds in the account of Norge Mining. Quite sure that all the unanswered questions in Norway as seen in numerous articles in major Norwegian press will have to be answered at once.

Wurmser and Von Merey’s link runs deep, with Von Merey’s millions of shares embedding him as a vested partner in Norge Mining’s fate. Von Merey’s 40-year banking career, including stints at Julius Bär, unlocked a worldwide network of high-risk investors — Russians, Venezuelans, Iranians, sanctioned elites — who flooded Norge Mining as shareholders, drawn by Wurmser’s connections.

This alliance birthed Wurmser’s monster: bypassing AML/KYC at MBaer allowed tainted funds to flow, propping up Norge Mining’s illusions. Wurmser’s 2006 Serbian disaster — wasting 6 million euros in a Gazprom/Tehnopromexport deal laced with 5 million euro commissions split among radicals like Maja Gojković — found new life through Von Merey’s laundering. Russian media hype, greased by 350,000 shares to Putin’s pal Andrei Malakhov, brought more dirty clients to MBaer.

Publicly anti-China, Wurmser secretly tried to negotiate a 250–300 million USD Bank of China stake in Norge Mining. Investors swallowed lies of 3–4 billion euro EU subsidies and 1.2 billion euro Norwegian guarantees.

Finally, the Wurmsers success story in business is still not established at best, as stated in swiss press, but they seem to overlook his first and only achievement dated back to 1984 as Mr. Zurich beauty contest winner under number 3.

Sources: WOZ (Nov 13, 2025), NZZ (Nov 1, 2025), RBC+ (Dec 2020), Serbian tabloid, Companies House CS01 (Dec 13, 2021), MBaer site, Inside Paradeplatz (Nov 15, 2024), swissinfo.ch (feb 27, 2026)