Goldrush - How To Sell Off A Country

"Goldrush" tells the story of the Treuhandanstalt - the most expensive experiment and the greatest white-collar-crime since Worldwar II. It's a film about greed as the driving force of economic development.

The trust agency "Treuhand" was established to privatise the state owned enterprises of the GDR. Never before had there been an enterprise like the Treuhand that temporarily ran and speedily privatised 8,500 companies. With four million jobs at stake in East Germany, this was a novel and unique experiment and one under enormous pressure of time. It was doomed to fail. Over three million jobs were lost and 4.000 companies were closed. The Treuhand existed for 30 months. In this time it lost 250 million Marks a day - in the name of the Federal Republic. Furthermore, the Treuhand was defrauded out of at least 20 billion Marks. The scandal has never been entirely resolved and most of the perpetrators escaped prosecution or were never impeached. "Goldrush" is not a historical piece - it is a film about the limitations of the social consensus. The film does not accuse, does not judge. It simply insists on the need to ask questions, even if the answers are not always conclusive.