A German billionaire believed to have died in a skiing accident may be alive and living with a mistress in Moscow, new evidence has suggested.
Karl-Erivan Haub, 58 at the
time, was training for a ski mountaineering race at the Matterhorn mountain in
Switzerland when he went missing in April 2018.
He was last seen heading up a
ski lift alone one morning and never returned to his hotel.
Authorities including teams of
alpine rescuers and five helicopters searched for six days, but his body was
never found.
After the six-day search, the
businessman was declared dead by a German court in 2021, according to the
Seattle Times.
He was declared legally dead by
a German court, leaving behind his wife, two children, and his company, retail
giant Tengelmann Group which had more than 75,000 employees
His younger brother Christian
swore in court that there was no indication Karl-Erivan, whose net worth was
estimated at £5.2billion, remained alive.
But now a major investigation
led by German broadcaster RTL claims to have found Karl-Erivan in Moscow, and
believes he’s living there with a mistress named Veronika Ermilova.
One of the journalists,
investigative reporter Liv von Boetticher, told Capital magazine that she was
aware of photos allegedly showing Haub in Moscow in 2021, the same year he was
legally declared dead.
“As far as I know, these photos
were obtained on behalf of Christian Haub and two internal investigators
working for him by an Israeli-American company that searched the biometric
surveillance system in Moscow for images of Karl-Erivan Haub,” she explained.
The coincidence in appearance
between Haub and the person in the images was about 90%, according to a Stern magazine
report from March 2023.
Based on her information,
Boetticher explained, Christian Haub had access to the photos when “he stated
under oath to the Cologne District Court in May 2021 that he had ‘no reliable
evidence’ that his brother was still alive.”
Boetticher insisted that there
is “strong evidence that [Karl-Erivan Haub] could have caused his disappearance
intentionally and that at least parts of his family were aware of it and,
against their better judgment, kept this secret from the Cologne District Court
and the public.”
Haub, who was born to German
parents in Tacoma, Washington, and educated in Switzerland, was married and had
two adult children at the time of his disappearance.
The latest evidence, however,
suggested that he may have a younger woman on the go in Russia, Boetticher told
Capital.
“There was an alleged lover of
Karl-Erivan Haub, with whom he had frequent telephone contact before his
disappearance and who is in contact with the Russian domestic secret service
FSB,” she said.
Rumors about Haub and his
alleged mistress, Veronika Ermilova, have circulated since around 2020, when
his wife, Katrin, publicly sparred with her brothers-in-law over whether to
have him declared legally dead, the Times reported.
Haub supposedly called
Erminolca’s number 13 times three days before his disappearance, the Times
added, citing RTL.
The billionaire was also
rumored to have had a Russian passport in addition to his US and German
citizenships, the outlet said.
There was also speculation that
millions of euros in Tengelmann funds had been funneled to Russia between 2010
and 2015.
Haub vanished just one month
after the death of his father, Erivan Haub. At the time of his death, the elder
Haub was worth an estimated $6.4 billion, according to Forbes.
Boetticher indicated that the
reason for Karl-Erivan Haub vanishing could be linked to the family’s business
dealings.
“Our suspicion is that dealings
with Russia or with Russian business partners may have put Karl-Erivan in
trouble in the Western world,” the journalist suggested to Capital.
Christian Haub took over the
Tengelmann Group as sole CEO shortly after his older brother disappeared.
His lawyer, Mark Binz,
vehemently denied the journalists’ allegations in a comment to Zeit Online.
“Of course, there is no truth
to the accusation,” Bonz scoffed. “Until a few weeks ago, the Cologne public
prosecutor’s office saw it that way and therefore refused to start an
investigation.”
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