A billionaire long believed to have died in a skiing accident may actually be alive and living with a younger woman in Moscow, new evidence has suggested.
Karl-Erivan Haub, then 58, vanished on a solo ski tour in the Alps on April 7, 2018.
A six-day search yielded no sign of the businessman, and he was declared dead by a German court in 2021, according to the Seattle Times.
Now, however, the state prosecutor’s office in Cologne has opened a probe into allegations that Haub’s brother, Christian, provided false information when he said he had zero information indicating that his brother could still be alive, the Daily Beast explained.
The investigation followed a criminal complaint from journalists with the broadcaster RTL that were looking into Haub’s disappearance, the outlet said.
One of the journalists, investigative reporter Liv von Boetticher, told Capital magazine that she was aware of photos allegedly showing Haub in Moscow in 2021 – the same year he was legally declared dead.
“As far as I know, these photos were obtained on behalf of Christian Haub and two internal investigators working for him by an Israeli-American company that searched the biometric surveillance system in Moscow for images of Karl-Erivan Haub,” she explained.
The coincidence in appearance between Haub and the person in the images was about 90%, according to a Stern magazine report from March 2023.
Based on her information, Boetticher explained, Christian Haub had access to the photos when “he stated under oath to the Cologne District Court in May 2021 that he had ‘no reliable evidence’ that his brother was still alive.”
Boetticher insisted that there is “strong evidence that [Karl-Erivan Haub] could have caused his disappearance intentionally and that at least parts of his family were aware of it and, against their better judgment, kept this secret from the Cologne District Court and the public.”
Haub – who was born to German parents in Tacoma, Washington, and educated in Switzerland – was married and had two adult children at the time of his disappearance.
The latest evidence, however, suggested that he may have a younger woman on the go in Russia, Boetticher told Capital.
“There was an alleged lover of Karl-Erivan Haub, with whom he had frequent telephone contact before his disappearance and who is in contact with the Russian domestic secret service FSB,” she said.
Rumors about Haub and his alleged mistress, Veronika Ermilova, have circulated since around 2020, when his wife, Katrin, publicly sparred with her brothers-in-law over whether to have him declared legally dead, the Times reported.
Haub supposedly called Erminolca’s number 13 times three days before his disappearance, the Times added, citing RTL.
The billionaire was also rumored to have had a Russian passport in addition to his US and German citizenships, the outlet said.
There was also speculation that millions of euros in Tengelmann funds had been funneled to Russia between 2010 and 2015.
Haub vanished just one month after the death of his father, Erivan Haub.
At the time of his death, the elder Haub was worth an estimated $6.4 billion, according to Forbes.
Boetticher indicated that the reason for Karl-Erivan Haub vanishing could be linked to the family’s business dealings.
“Our suspicion is that dealings with Russia or with Russian business partners may have put Karl-Erivan in trouble in the Western world,” the journalist suggested to Capital.
Christian Haub took over the Tengelmann Group as sole CEO shortly after his older brother disappeared.
His lawyer, Mark Binz, vehemently denied the journalists’ allegations in a comment to Zeit Online.
“Of course, there is no truth to the accusation,” Bonz scoffed. “Until a few weeks ago, the Cologne public prosecutor’s office saw it that way and therefore refused to start an investigation.”
With Post wires
