Environmentalists clearing land for villas
The Plant-for-the-Planet foundation promises reforestation in Mexico. At the same time, the founder is having trees felled there for real estate.
By Tin Fischer and Hannah Knuth
February 10, 2025
The video is available on YouTube. Women in long dresses ride a golf cart through a forest in southern Mexico . The driver shows them the area, they laugh, and take selfies. A multi-million dollar project is planned for construction here, on the Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean coast: a roughly 100,000 square meter development of villas and townhouses. On an area that was previously forested.
The company behind the real estate project belongs to a family known in Germany for its environmental activism: the Finkbeiners from Bavaria. Frithjof Finkbeiner and his son Felix founded the organization Plant-for-the-Planet 18 years ago. His father was active in the Club of Rome, and Felix Finkbeiner is known as an environmentalist from talk shows. Their foundation grew with the promise of planting millions of trees worldwide to stop climate change. Most of the foundation's planting areas are located in Mexico.
Plant-for-the-Planet has already attracted attention in the past for inaccurate information and promises. DIE ZEIT first reported on this four years ago. Now, new research raises further questions about the foundation's transparency and reliability. This concerns the clearing of thousands of trees for the founders' private real estate ventures – and their alleged intention to use foundation funds for a beach villa.
Frithjof Finkbeiner, 62,
the father © Plant for the planet
A piece of land north of Tulum, the famous coastal town in Yucatán. Tulum Gardens, a community with dozens of homes, is to be built here. The advertising brochure promises pure luxury: glass window fronts, green roof terraces, and, in addition to pool and tennis facilities, there will be "heated Jacuzzis" outside. The houses are tailored to the needs of "modern homeowners, retirees, and investors." Most of the villas are not yet built, but they are already for sale.
SkyHouse Villa: $509,950
Pecari Grande Villa: $664,950
Quetzal Villa: $639,950
Jaguar Villa: $641,450
The company behind this real estate project is Tankah Enterprise, which builds and develops several real estate projects on Mexico's Caribbean coast. Another is being built directly on the beach in Tulum, a multi-story building complex that promises "living with the turtles." In Playa del Carmen, another coastal resort, the company is also developing a villa development covering over 145,000 square meters – with a park, spa, and cinema.
Tankah Enterprise advertises the developments as "eco-luxury real estate." It intends to use the proceeds from sales to finance forest protection and tree planting. The houses are an ideal place "to live in harmony with nature." What does that mean in concrete terms? For Tulum Gardens, the company promises to install six solar panels on each house. They also plan to collect rainwater and establish an electric shuttle system. "The development looks like most other projects," a former real estate agent from the region told ZEIT. "There's a lot of construction going on here right now."
According to the Mexican commercial registry, Tankah Enterprise is majority-owned by Karolin Finkbeiner, the wife of Frithjof Finkbeiner, the founder of Plant-for-the-Planet. He is also listed on the Tankah Enterprise website as the company's "CEO and Co-Founder." Felix Finkbeiner, now 27 and the public face of Plant-for-the-Planet since the age of nine, holds almost a quarter of the shares in Tankah Enterprise through a family limited partnership.
Felix Finkbeiner, 27,
the son © Plant for the Planet
Four years ago, ZEIT reported that the information the foundation used to solicit funds was exaggerated or simply false. Permits were missing for one area where it wanted to plant trees with the donations, and another was completely underwater. The foundation had massively understated the survival rate of the trees it touted for climate protection. Even at that time, Tankah Enterprise, founded in 2002, raised questions. For example, was the company connected to the foundation's previous intentions to generate timber from the planted trees? Frithjof Finkbeiner told ZEIT at the time: "The family business in Mexico has nothing to do with forests, trees, or timber. It exclusively engages in civil engineering."
So.
A large portion of the land on which the real estate projects are being built has been forested for decades. The settlements are easily accessible on the outskirts of the city. Satellite images show how forest was cleared to make way for the settlements' roads, and in Tulum, even for the first houses. Tankah Enterprise touts the proximity to nature, raving about the "breathtaking view" of the "surrounding jungle" that one can enjoy from the houses.
So the founders of Plant-for-the-Planet have spent years collecting donations for environmental protection to plant trees – and are now clearing trees elsewhere with their private real estate company?
The foundation in Germany turns against its founder
When asked, Frithjof Finkbeiner did not deny that Tankah Enterprise was clearing land for its real estate investments. He writes that he attaches great importance to "limiting interventions in nature to a minimum." This is not pristine tropical forest, but vegetation "that is only 30 years old." Finkbeiner claims that the profits flow directly into the protection and renaturation of forests. Since 2020, the proceeds have been allocated to the Mexican organization. In the same year, Finkbeiner told ZEIT: "There are and have never been any overlapping resources between my professional activities and Plant-for-the-Planet, neither in Germany nor in Mexico. They are completely different things."
The overlaps extend further. Tankah Enterprise's website lists a man named Raul Negrete, a Mexican land surveyor, as co-managing director and co-founder. He has also served as the honorary president of Plant-for-the-Planet since its founding in Mexico in 2013. And in the summer of 2023, the organization apparently decided on a particularly questionable project.
According to research by ZEIT, Tankah Enterprise wanted to purchase a $1.65 million villa on Tulum's beach, directly adjacent to the property where the company was planning one of its three real estate projects. The Turtle Heart Villa, as it was called, was to be integrated into the neighboring beach project. At the time, it belonged to a US couple.
Tankah Enterprise paid $350,000 for the villa, and ZEIT has obtained a corresponding transfer receipt. However, before the company transferred the remaining $1.3 million, Frithjof Finkbeiner reportedly changed his mind. According to email records obtained by ZEIT, he informed the owners that they should change the buyer for the villa. The new buyer Finkbeiner wanted was the non-profit organization Plant-for-the-Planet Mexico.
Finkbeiner wrote in an email to the sellers at the time: "Raul, Karolin, and I have decided to support the non-profit organization Plant-for-the-Planet AC by making the organization the owner of the Turtle Heart Villa for $1,300,000, and Tankah Enterprise will support them with the $350,000 already paid." Raul Negrete also sent an updated purchase agreement and wrote that the foundation was "willing and able to transfer the $1,300,000." The board in Mexico had "agreed" to purchase the Turtle Heart Villa.
Ultimately, the purchase does not take place – but apparently only because the parties cannot agree on new conditions.
What did a non-profit foundation that raises funds for tree planting want with a $1.65 million villa on the Caribbean coast of Mexico – more than 400 kilometers from the Plant-for-the-Planet planting areas?
To this day, a large portion of donations from Germany go to Mexico. The foundation in Germany collects the money, and the Mexican organization plants the trees. According to Mexican financial statements, the organization received a total of over €26 million in Mexico between 2014 and 2023. In 2023, it had assets of €10 million—enough to raise $1.3 million to purchase a villa.
When asked what purpose the villa by the sea was supposed to serve, the organization in Germany reacted with shock. "The process surrounding a planned acquisition of the Turtle Heart Villa by Plant-for-the-Planet Mexico AC was unknown to the German foundation, its decision-makers, and even Felix Finkbeiner until your inquiry," the foundation wrote. "We see a serious risk of further damage to trust and emphatically distance ourselves from such a plan."
After ZEIT reported on the abuses at Plant-for-the-Planet in 2020, the foundation initially attempted to discredit the reporting before finally admitting mistakes and improving transparency. A new board was appointed in Germany, and Frithjof and Karolin Finkbeiner resigned from the German foundation's operational business. Felix Finkbeiner also resigned from the board. Since then, he has continued to work on reforestation as the face of the foundation and receives a monthly salary from Plant-for-the-Planet.
Now the foundation in Germany is turning against its founder – and Felix Finkbeiner against his father. Felix's relationship with his parents is "shattered," the foundation writes. There has apparently been a rift with the couple in recent years. Since 2023, the new board in Germany has been "systematically pursuing the goal" of "removing" Frithjof and Karolin Finkbeiner from "any responsibility" within the international Plant-for-the-Planet network.
The German foundation maintains "no relationship whatsoever" with Tankah Enterprise. "As far as we know at the moment, no money has flowed from Tankah Enterprise to the organization in Mexico," says CEO Jens Waltermann regarding Frithjof Finkbeiner's intentions to donate income from Tankah Enterprise. Felix Finkbeiner told ZEIT that he is considering selling his shares in the company, which were transferred to him as a child.
The father, Frithjof Finkbeiner, explains the process surrounding the attempted purchase of the Turtle Heart Villa as follows: He offered Plant-for-the-Planet Mexico to enter into the purchase agreement because it was "extremely lucrative." The non-profit organization could have sold the house at a profit that same year and "planted more trees" with the proceeds. The German foundation writes that, upon inquiry, the president of the Mexican organization assured the foundation that there had been no final decision by the Mexican board regarding the purchase – contrary to what the board assured the sellers in its email. An independent investigation from 2023 also revealed that the Mexican organization had not misused any donations in the past ten years.
For Michael Stöber, a foundation law expert at Kiel University, the process surrounding the purchase of the villa sounds "extremely atypical." He says he has never heard of a non-profit organization "speculating with real estate in this way." Stöber also sees the German foundation as responsible: "It has a duty to ensure that the funds in Mexico are used appropriately and must establish appropriate control mechanisms."
Does the German foundation have sufficient control over the Mexican branch? After all, the branch uses a large portion of the donations and is responsible for the plantings. According to the German foundation, a contract with the Mexican branch only stipulates close reporting starting in 2024. Even then, Germany would probably have learned about a purchase only afterward – if the funds had been spent long ago.
Following the scandal four years ago, many partners ended their collaboration with Plant-for-the-Planet , including the consumer goods company Procter & Gamble and the publishing house Gruner + Jahr. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development also ended its support. However, some partners stayed because they believed in the reforms. A Sat.1 forest has since been created, as has one for Leni Klum, the daughter of model Heidi Klum.
In the course of its review, Plant-for-the-Planet promised sponsors and donors greater reliability. It will have to renew its promise.