A Missing Story

 N-TV news brought up this story here in the morning, and it's an interesting curiosity piece.

Germany had this billionaire-owner of the a grocery-store empire (Karl-Erivan Haub of the Tengelmann Group).  Age 58.  

This guy went out of a ski lodge resort on 7 April 2018, and never returned.  This was at Zermatt, Switzerland....a fairly robust ski region.  He's been missing since that morning.

Odd things about this deal?  Well...if you go and read through the material....he walked out of the lodgings, in a thin jacket....something that you'd typically not do....if you were skiing.  

Then there's this fact that he switched off his cellphone at 9 AM....as he walked out....so that tracking him was virtually impossible.

News reports also talk about this Russian 'lover'....which might be more speculation than anything else.  But a fair number of folks knew of the Russian gal, and tried to contact her since that week.  Responses via Facebook or email?  They are non-existent.  

There's also this matter of some missing company money.  Some folks say that three years prior to the ski week deal....around 40-million Euro was transferred into Russian for a business 'renovation', but no one really saw the 40-million or knows how it was spent.

An added problem in this script?  Well....the ownership is really a partnership, with Haub's brother (yes, co-owners).

This week, the wife finally said enough, and want the court to declare the guy dead.  Court documents have been sent onto Koln's regional court.

The brother?  He'd actually sent paperwork back four months ago to start the process, then oddly...in mid-January....halted the paperwork.  No reason given.

If the process proceeds and the court says the guy is dead?  The two kids would inherit a ton of money (into the hundreds of millions), but also be forced to pay a fair amount on taxes.  

Had this been a kidnapping....it would have been splashed across the news media and a major topic.....so I don't believe that speculation that is passed around.

Might there be simply an exit that Haub arranged, and he quietly disappeared off into some Pacific island?  Maybe.  The fact that no one sees anything much of the Russian gal?  Yeah, that falls into the chatter as well.  The fact that this got out into the public media about his Russian girlfriend, and the potential for the wife to sue and take a portion of his business in a messy divorce?  Well, it's possible.

Back in the 1980s, I went on a ski weekend to the Zermatt region.  There's tons of trails and you could easily get yourself in a bind, if you didn't pay attention.  Snow in April though?  Maybe at the bottom third of the ski areas....it'd be crapped-out by then, but the rest would probably be running.

So it's an interesting missing persons case.  Maybe he fell.  But you'd think that by mid-summer....along the trails, his body would have been seen.