BMW Heiress in Steamy Extortion Scandal, With Ugly Allegations Reaching Back to Nazi Era

[Blue_Tires]

MUNICH, Germany — German automakers' links to the Nazi regime of the mid-20th century: that ugly and controversial subject resurfaces now and again, but seldom in the tabloid-style way that it has this week. Wealthy matron Susanne Klatten, daughter of the late BMW chief Herbert Quandt, is charging a man with blackmail. The man, reportedly one Helg Sgarbi, has countered that his actions were in part intended as revenge for his Jewish grandfather's time in the automaker's forced labor camps during World War II. He has been arrested and is currently in custody in Munich.

Klatten, age 46, is Germany's richest woman with a fortune of about $10 billion and a personal 12.5 percent stake in BMW. Sometime in the past two years, she allegedly embarked on an affair with a 43-year-old Swiss man she met in a bar. The man secretly filmed their trysts via an accomplice and demanded the equivalent of $51 million to keep them private, European news reports say. Klatten, who is married with three children, complained to German government prosecutors when the blackmailer continued to increase his demands.

The story becomes truly ugly with the report in German media that the blackmailer's grandfather had been a forced laborer in the Quandt family's factories during World War II and that the blackmail scheme was a form of revenge. An exposé shown on German TV in October 2007 explored the frequently restated claims that slave labor was used by BMW during the war to help with the Nazi war effort.

According to a report in the U.K. Independent newspaper this week, Sgarbi has similarly blackmailed other wealthy German women, giving the same reason, although pure greed was undoubtedly involved at some level as well. The paper also noted claims that Klatten's father, Herbert Quandt, was "alleged to have worked closely with Hitler" and that "female slave laborers were employed" at the family's factories during World War II.

http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=135288

[Westegg]

1. What a despicable bunch of humans!

[Blue_Tires]

2. ttt