A FORMER banker has apologised to a string of wealthy women after he admitted duping Germany’s richest woman and other victims out of millions.
A Munich court yesterday sentenced Helg Sgarbi (44) to six years in prison for fraud, attempted fraud and attempted blackmail after he admitted fleecing Susanne Klatten (46), heir of carmaker BMW, out of €7 million, and another three women out of about €3 million.
They included a 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 at her holiday home in Antibes.
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.
“I deeply regret what has happened and apologise before this court and the public to these wronged women,” said Sgarbi. He posed with a broad smile for the 150 journalists in the court.
Sgarbi, 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 from Ms Klatten and two other women within 18 months. He told them all he had knocked a child over in a car accident and needed millions to cover his legal fees.
Ms Klatten, a member of the Quandt dynasty who sits on the board of BMW and the chemicals firm Altana, was Sgarbi’s biggest conquest. She told police she had met him in the garage of a hotel and handed over €7 million in a cardboard box.
They first met at a health resort in Innsbruck in July 2007, allegedly beginning an affair in the south of France the following month.They later met at a Holiday Inn in Munich for an intimate encounter, which Sgarbi or an accomplice is believed to have filmed.
After she called off the relationship, Sgarbi tried to defraud Ms Klatten of a further €49 million by threatening to send a 38-minute DVD of their tryst to the board of BMW, her family and the press.
Ms Klatten said 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”.
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 €6 million as well as the DVD.
Defending Sgarbi, Egon Geis said Ms Klatten, who is married with three children, had handed over the money of her own free will.
According to German investigators, 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.
Mr Barretta (63) claims to have walked on water and to exhibit 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.
Mr Barretta, who denies involvement, is under house arrest. A court case against him for allegedly forming a criminal organisation, fraud and attempted blackmail is pending this year. – (Guardian service)