A former banker apologized on Monday to a string of wealthy women after he admitted duping Germany’s richest woman and other victims out of millions of euros.
A Munich court sentenced Helg Sgarbi, 44, to six years in prison for fraud, attempted fraud and attempted blackmail after he admitted fleecing Susanne Klatten, 46, the heir of carmaker BMW, out of 7 million euros (US$8.89 million), and another three women out of about 3 million euros. They included Swiss Countess Verena du Pasquier-Geubels, 50 years his senior, who owned a chateau on the banks of Lake Geneva, and a British woman, identified as “Alice T.,” whom he visited in Antibes, France, at her holiday home.
The guilty plea by Sgarbi, a former specialist in mergers and acquisitions at the investment bank Credit Suisse, saved the billionaire Klatten from the humiliation of having to give evidence in court.
“I deeply regret what has happened and apologize before this court and the public to these wronged women,” Sgarbi said.
He had earlier posed with a broad smile for the 150 journalists in the court.
Sgarbi, who has been nicknamed the “Swiss gigolo” by the media, wooed the women after meeting them in health spas and boasted to police that he could “read women like a map: Everything is signposted, each turn in the road.”
Posing as a special Swiss representative in crisis zones, he extorted more than 9 million euros from Klatten and two other women within 18 months. He told them all variations on a story that he had knocked a child over in a car accident and needed millions to cover his legal fees. The women fell for his tale.
Klatten, a member of the Quandt dynasty who sits on the board of BMW and chemicals firm Altana, was Sgarbi’s biggest conquest.
During the investigation she told police she had met him in the garage of a hotel to hand over 7 million euros in a cardboard box.
They first met at an exclusive health resort in Innsbruck, Austria, in July 2007, allegedly beginning an affair in the south of France the following month, and later meeting in Munich for an intimate encounter that either Sgarbi or an accomplice is believed to have filmed.
After she called off the relationship, Sgarbi tried to defraud Klatten of a further 49 million euros by threatening to send a 38-minute DVD of their tryst to the board of BMW, her family and the press.
In her only interview so far, given shortly after the case came to light, Klatten, a woman whose face was virtually unknown in Germany before the scandal, said that when it became obvious Sgarbi was trying to blackmail her “that was a moment of clarity: You are now a victim and you must defend yourself.”
The state prosecutor in the case, Thomas Steinkrauss-Koch, sought a nine-year prison sentence, asking Sgarbi: “Where is the money? Where are the tapes? And who are the accomplices?”
Judge Gilbert Wolf said Sgarbi’s guilty plea saved him from a longer sentence, but recommended he serve the full term because of the issue of the missing 7 million euros as well as the DVD.
Defending Sgarbi, Egon Geis said that Klatten, who is married with three children, had handed over the money of her own free will.
The case was “not comparable with blackmailing supermarket chains by putting poison in the foodstuffs,” Geis said.
German investigators said Sgarbi’s accomplice is alleged to be a former second-hand car dealer called Ernano Barretta, the head of an obscure pseudo-Catholic sect run in the Abruzzo region in Italy.
Barretta, 63, claims to have walked on water and to bear stigmata. He allegedly has about 30 disciples who commit their earnings to him, and Sgarbi was said by former members of the sect to have been his right-hand man.
Barretta, who denies involvement, is under house arrest and a court case against him for allegedly forming a criminal organization, fraud and attempted blackmail is expected to go ahead this year.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS