REVscene Automotive Forum - 'Gigolo' admits blackmailing BMW heiress

A former Swiss investment banker has admitted seducing and blackmailing one of Germany's wealthiest woman.
Last year, Susanne Klatten, a member of the Quandt family - the leading shareholders in car-maker BMW, went public after her lover filmed secret meetings and demanded more than £44 million not to reveal them.

Helg Sgarbi, the Zurich-born banker, admitted to a German court that he seduced four wealthy women including Ms Klatten and persuaded them to pay him almost £9 million using spurious claims he had, for example, fallen foul of the Italian mafia.

Ms Klatten, a 46-year-old married mother-of-three, had first met the 44-year-old Swiss at a health centre.

Sgarbi falsely described himself as a multilingual special envoy for war zones, winning over Ms Klatten after sending her SMS messages and phoning her with declarations of his love.

She later handed him a cardboard box containing more than £6 million believing he had paralysed a child in a traffic accident in America and needed the money to pay compensation to avoid being jailed.

Sgarbi said: "I regret what I did. I apologise to the women involved."

Anton Winkler, spokesperson for the prosecution, told reporters that the man, nicknamed 'Gigolo' by the press, faced charges for fraud and extortion. He added that Sgrabi is accused of two cases of attempted blackmail.

Mr Winkler said: "He told the ladies that he had compromising material of them. In one case he said the material was stolen from him by the Mafia and now the Mafia was asking for money, but later he asked directly for money.

"In the second case he directly blackmailed his victim and told her that he had pictures. He told her 'You pay or I go public with the pictures and your privacy."

Newspapers originally reported that the defendant had justified his actions, saying he wanted to avenge his Jewish grandfather's forced labour in Ms Klatten's family's factories during the war. No mention was made of this claim in court.

The Quandt dynasty had close ties to the Nazi party and built its fortune supplying German army and railway worker uniforms. Ms Klatten's grandfather's first wife went on to marry Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.