He was lost in the Swiss Alps, now he is claimed to be a Russian agent: Who is Karl-Erivan Haub?
Karl Erivan Haub, the owner of the 'Tengellman' company, one of Germany's richest businessmen, disappeared in the Alps in 2018, where he went for a ski trip. The businessman, who has not been heard from since April 7, 2018, was considered dead by court decision.
Billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub, chairman of retail group Tengellman, is dead, three years after he disappeared in the Swiss Alps, a German court has announced.
The search for 58-year-old billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub ended in October 2018 after he disappeared under the famous Matterhorn peak, located on Switzerland's southern border with Italy.
HE WAS PREPARING FOR THE SKI COMPETITION
Haub, a ski enthusiast, went to Switzerland on April 17 to participate in the international long-distance ski competition organized by the Swiss army.
Christian Haub, the brother of the famous businessman, stated in the letter he sent to the German press that his brother was an experienced, high-level skier and that he hoped he would become a professional skier as soon as possible.
Karl-Erivan Haub (March 2, 1960 – disappeared April 7, 2018) was an American-born German-Russian billionaire businessman. He was managing director and part owner of Tengelmann Group. He disappeared while mountaineering on April 7, 2018, and was legally declared dead by a German court in May 2021.
Karl-Erivan Haub took over the company after the sudden death of his father, Yerevan Haub, in 2000. Karl-Erivan's younger brother Christian took over sole management of Tengelmann on 17 April 2018. The duo had run Tengelmann together since 2000.
There has since been a family dispute over the redistribution of power at the multibillion-dollar retail group, which includes textile industry Kik and hardware store chain Obi.
The Tengelmann Group was owned by Karl-Erivan Haub, whose current boss is Christian Haub and his other brothers, Georg Haub. Christian, Georg and their family companies applied to have Karl-Erivan declared dead in October 2020. However, Georg Haub withdrew his application in mid-January 2021.
The obituary application was initially harshly criticized by Karl-Erivan's wife, Katrin Haub. In early 2021, she changed her mind and joined the practice with her children. Then, in April 2021, the heirs of Karl-Erivan Haub agreed to sell their shares in Tengelmann Warenhandels-KG to Christian Haub.
The lawyers did not provide any information about the purchase price. However, according to his lawyer, Christian Haub bid 1.1 billion euros for his missing brother's company shares at the end of last year. Auditing firm KPMG estimates the company's value at around 4 billion euros.
Karl-Erivan Haub was born on March 2, 1960, in Tacoma, Washington, and was a dual German-US citizen.
April 2024
The Times carried the interesting story in its headline: Was the missing billionaire a Russian agent?
RTL reporter Liv von Boetticher, who investigated the missing billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub, compiled the findings about the incident into a book. German-American billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub, who disappeared during a ski trip in Switzerland six years ago and was initially believed to have died in an accident, was a Russian agent who was taken to Moscow while skiing on the Matterhorn, Boetticher told The Times says.
Boetticher's book about his investigation, The Tengelmann Dossier, published last year, reveals the power struggle between the Haub family, which owns the multi-billion-euro business with a global workforce of 75,000. The search continues to find out what happened to Haub, who was 58 years old at the time of his disappearance.
One theory put forward by investigators was that Haub went skiing in Cervina in the Italian Alps and was captured there because he was worried his connections to questionable Russian business partners would be discovered by the CIA. Boetticher said Haub was declared dead in May 2021 following a power struggle between his "widow" Katrin and his brother Christian, but Tengelmann's own investigators had by then discovered two images taken from Moscow security cameras that looked very similar to Haub. He said that he had collected a lot of information that he was alive, including his life. Boetticher believes the photos could be used as evidence in court. The photos, dated February 2021, were taken on Kolomenskaya Street in Moscow, and one was very close and the other was from afar.