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Copycat tries to blackmail BMW heiress again

A man tried to blackmail BMW heiress Susanne Klatten out of €75,000 with an alleged sex video just two months after her former lover was jailed for doing the same thing, daily Bild reported Saturday.

Copycat tries to blackmail BMW heiress again
Photo: DPA

Munich prosecutor Anton Winkler told the newspaper that investigators had arrested a suspect.

The latest attempt had nothing to do Swiss gigolo Helg Sgarbi, who was convicted of blackmail in March and sentenced to six years in prison after talking Klatten out of €7 million. Most of the money has not yet been recovered.

The man reportedly contacted Klatten and said he had sex videos showing her in “dangerous” situations.

The suspect however, had neither sex videos nor any relationship to Klatten, Winkler said.

Sgarbi’s lawyer, Egon Geis, said his client, “knew nothing up until now about this copycat artist.”

Klatten, 46, is the daughter of the late Herbert Quandt, the German industrialist who saved BMW from collapse in 1957 and built the Bavarian carmaker into a world auto power.

Sgarbi was arrested last fall after demanding hundreds of millions of euros from Klatten in order to keep their affair secret. With an Italian co-conspirator, Sgarbi filmed his encounters with the married mother-of-three.

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POLITICS

Germany raids properties in bribery probe aimed at AfD politician

German officials said on Thursday they had raided properties as part of a bribery probe into an MP, who media say is a far-right AfD lawmaker accused of spreading Russian propaganda.

Germany raids properties in bribery probe aimed at AfD politician

The investigation targets Petr Bystron, the number-two candidate for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in next month’s European Parliament elections, Der Spiegel news outlet reported.

Police, and prosecutors in Munich, confirmed on Thursday they were conducting “a preliminary investigation against a member of the German Bundestag on the initial suspicion of bribery of elected officials and money laundering”, without giving a name.

Properties in Berlin, the southern state of Bavaria and the Spanish island of Mallorca were searched and evidence seized, they said in a statement.

About 70 police officers and 11 prosecutors were involved in the searches.

Last month, Bystron denied media reports that he was paid to spread pro-Russian views on a Moscow-financed news website, just one of several scandals that the extreme-right anti-immigration AfD is battling.

READ ALSO: How spying scandal has rocked troubled German far-right party

Bystron’s offices in the German parliament, the Bundestag, were searched after lawmakers voted to waive the immunity usually granted to MPs, his party said.

The allegations against Bystron surfaced in March when the Czech government revealed it had bust a Moscow-financed network that was using the Prague-based Voice of Europe news site to spread Russian propaganda across Europe.

Did AfD politicians receive Russian money?

Czech daily Denik N said some European politicians cooperating with the news site were paid from Russian funds, in some cases to fund their European Parliament election campaigns.

It singled out the AfD as being involved.

Denik N and Der Spiegel named Bystron and Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s top candidate for the European elections, as suspects in the case.

After the allegations emerged, Bystron said that he had “not accepted any money to advocate pro-Russian positions”.

Krah has denied receiving money for being interviewed by the site.

On Wednesday, the European Union agreed to impose a broadcast ban on the Voice of Europe, diplomats said.

The AfD’s popularity surged last year, when it capitalised on discontent in Germany at rising immigration and a weak economy, but it has dropped back in the face of recent scandals.

As well as the Russian propaganda allegations, the party has faced a Chinese spying controversy and accusations that it discussed the idea of mass deportations with extremists, prompting a wave of protests across Germany.

READ ALSO: Germany, Czech Republic accuse Russia of cyberattacks

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