BMW heiress blackmailed by ex-lover
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 09:22:00 11/04/2008
Filed Under: Crime, Law & Justice
BERLIN -- Germany's richest woman, BMW heiress Susanne Klatten, was in the spotlight Monday after reports alleged that a former lover tried to blackmail her using videos of their steamy hotel room encounters.
Klatten -- who with stakes in automaker BMW and chemicals giant Altana is reputed to have a personal fortune of €7.8 billion ($10.0 billion) -- first met Helg Sgarbi in mid-2007 at a hotel bar, press reports said.
The 46-year-old married mother-of-three fell for the smooth-talking 41-year-old Swiss's charms, meeting him in inexpensive hotels in BMW's home city of Munich over following weeks, the popular Bild newspaper reported.
Sgarbi used his liaison to extract money from his super-rich conquest, telling her that gangsters were after him for running over the child of a US mafioso and that he needed €7.5 million to save his neck, Italian newspapers said.
Reportedly no newcomer to persuading heiresses to part with their money, his sob story worked: Klatten handed him the money in €200 banknotes in the basement garage of a hotel in September 2007, the reports said.
Soon afterwards the relationship ended -- but not the affair.
In room 630 at the Holiday Inn in Munich had been one Ernani Barretta, Sgarbi's Italian accomplice, armed with a video camera secretly filming events in room 629 where Klatten and her lover were staying, the reports said.
According to an Italian police report quoted by the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Sgarbi phoned Klatten in November demanding €14 million or he would release compromising video footage.
He sent her a letter and DVD in December and the billionairess agreed to a rendezvous at a shopping center in Austria on January 14 this year to hand over the money, the newspaper said.
But instead of going herself, Klatten sent the police.
Sgarbi and Barretta, 63, were arrested and have since been extradited to Munich, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said, adding that six other Italians and Swiss were also suspected of involvement, mostly family members and including Sgarbi's wife.
Susanne Klatten is the daughter of Herbert Quandt, the German industrialist who saved BMW from collapse in 1957 and built the Bavarian automaker into a world auto power.
When he died in 1982 aged 72, he left his considerable fortune to his widow Johanna Quandt and his children Stefan and Susanne.
The latter changed her surname in 1990 after marrying Jan Klatten, an engineer she met while doing a BMW apprenticeship -- incognito so as to hide her identity.
Unlike her brother, the heiress has sought to steer clear of the limelight in her private life and business affairs, preferring to wield influence behind the scenes.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung said two or three other rich German women had already fallen victim to similar scams in recent years.
They include a woman who is believed to have given Sgarbi a total of €1.6 million.
For now, the blonde Klatten has remained silent, as Munich prosecutors confirmed to AFP on Sunday only that Sgarbi was in custody and that an investigation had been going "for several months".
Dark-haired Sgarbi, a tall, former Swiss army officer who speaks eight languages, has spent time in prison, Italian news reports said.
Barretta was charged in the 1990s with fraud and extortion after posing as a faith healer and charging ailing women tens of thousands of euros to cure them, according to Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick.
Prosecutors in Munich hope to bring charges before the end of the year against Sgarbi, spokesman Anton Winkler told AFP on Monday.
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