WTF?
The English version of the Abruzzo country hotel's website promises, "Nurture, well-being and elegant relaxation await you at the Rifugio 'Valle Grande' Country House ... surrounded by a vast private forest at the foot of the beautiful historic Mount Queglia. According to tradition, this is the site where the Italic tribes swore their oath against Rome in 90 BC."
But Italian police say it is also the site where two of the most outrageous fraudsters in recent Italian history retired to count the millions in blackmail takings they had extorted from a lonely German billionairess, to bury at least €2m (£1.6m) in the hotel grounds, and to launder much of the rest into new luxury cars including a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce.
The owner of the Valle Grande Country House, Ernano Barretta, 63, is in jail in Italy; his alleged accomplice, gigolo par excellence Helg Sgarbi, 41, was arrested in Austria and is in prison in Germany facing trial for extortion. The story of a near-incredible swindle, and the greed that ended it, emerged in Italy in June with Mr Barretta's arrest. Then. the name of the alleged victim was kept out of the media. But now she has been revealed as BMW heiress Susanne Klatten, the richest woman in Germany.
What is now revealed is the stratospheric wealth of Ms Klatten, and the massive hole the affair has punched in the privacy of one of Germany's most discreet business dynasties. But also because Mr Sgarbi – if leaks from the interrogation of his partner are to be believed – was much more than just a staggeringly effective extortioner. He is said to be a man bent on exacting revenge for the crimes of BMW against his father, a Polish Jew and, during the war, a slave labourer in a BMW factory. The group made munitions, aero engines and batteries for U-boats and V2 rockets. One of their salesmen was Herman Goering, later head of the Luftwaffe. When Mr Sgarbi said he bedded Ms Klatten in posh hotels in Monte Carlo, Munich and elsewhere, he was sleeping with the enemy, with a cruel vengeance in mind.
Mrs Klatten, 46, is the great grand-daughter of Gunther Quandt, the founder of BMW who died in 1954 and whose first wife, Magda, later married the Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels. The heiress has a degree in marketing and management from the University of Buckingham and worked with with Dresdner Bank and McKinsey, the consultants, before she was appointed to the supervisory board of BMW in 1997.
The fame of her name has dogged her – she narrowly avoided being kidnapped at the age of 16 – and led to her sometimes using a false one. Her husband, Jan Klatten, a BMW engineer, says when he first flirted with an attractive new trainee called "Susanne Kant", he had no idea that she owned 12.5 per cent of the company.
The English version of the Abruzzo country hotel's website promises, "Nurture, well-being and elegant relaxation await you at the Rifugio 'Valle Grande' Country House ... surrounded by a vast private forest at the foot of the beautiful historic Mount Queglia. According to tradition, this is the site where the Italic tribes swore their oath against Rome in 90 BC."
But Italian police say it is also the site where two of the most outrageous fraudsters in recent Italian history retired to count the millions in blackmail takings they had extorted from a lonely German billionairess, to bury at least €2m (£1.6m) in the hotel grounds, and to launder much of the rest into new luxury cars including a Ferrari, a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce.
The owner of the Valle Grande Country House, Ernano Barretta, 63, is in jail in Italy; his alleged accomplice, gigolo par excellence Helg Sgarbi, 41, was arrested in Austria and is in prison in Germany facing trial for extortion. The story of a near-incredible swindle, and the greed that ended it, emerged in Italy in June with Mr Barretta's arrest. Then. the name of the alleged victim was kept out of the media. But now she has been revealed as BMW heiress Susanne Klatten, the richest woman in Germany.
What is now revealed is the stratospheric wealth of Ms Klatten, and the massive hole the affair has punched in the privacy of one of Germany's most discreet business dynasties. But also because Mr Sgarbi – if leaks from the interrogation of his partner are to be believed – was much more than just a staggeringly effective extortioner. He is said to be a man bent on exacting revenge for the crimes of BMW against his father, a Polish Jew and, during the war, a slave labourer in a BMW factory. The group made munitions, aero engines and batteries for U-boats and V2 rockets. One of their salesmen was Herman Goering, later head of the Luftwaffe. When Mr Sgarbi said he bedded Ms Klatten in posh hotels in Monte Carlo, Munich and elsewhere, he was sleeping with the enemy, with a cruel vengeance in mind.
Mrs Klatten, 46, is the great grand-daughter of Gunther Quandt, the founder of BMW who died in 1954 and whose first wife, Magda, later married the Nazi propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels. The heiress has a degree in marketing and management from the University of Buckingham and worked with with Dresdner Bank and McKinsey, the consultants, before she was appointed to the supervisory board of BMW in 1997.
The fame of her name has dogged her – she narrowly avoided being kidnapped at the age of 16 – and led to her sometimes using a false one. Her husband, Jan Klatten, a BMW engineer, says when he first flirted with an attractive new trainee called "Susanne Kant", he had no idea that she owned 12.5 per cent of the company.
