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CRIME

Bayern blackmailer gets stiff jail term

UPDATE: A man who admitted to trying to blackmail jailed football legend Uli Hoeneß, former boss of Bayern Munich, for hundreds of thousands of euros was sentenced to three years nine months in prison on Tuesday.

Published: 16 December 2014 10:00 CET
Updated: 16 December 2014 12:45 CET
Bayern blackmailer gets stiff jail term
The attempted blackmailer in court on Monday. Photo: DPA

"There's no doubt about the culpability of the defendant", presiding judge Oliver Ottmann said during sentencing.

But Ottmann didn't hand down the maximum penalty requested by prosecutors, saying that the man had shown "understanding of his crime and remorse".

The 51-year-old defendant confessed to having sent Hoeneß, currently serving a jail term for tax fraud, a letter warning that his time in prison would be "no picnic" unless he paid up, a court spokeswoman said.

"The defendant made a full confession," the spokeswoman for the regional court in Munich said on the opening day of the court case.

Signed Mister X, the blackmail note demanding €215,000 was posted to Hoeneß' private address in May before he went to prison and immediately handed to the police by Hoeneß' wife.

The defendant had previously served prison sentences himself and claimed in the letter he had "real influence" over how Hoeneß' time in jail could go.

"The defendant indicated as a motive for the act his own financial need," the spokeswoman said.

He also felt that Hoeneß had come away more lightly in his sentence than he himself had earlier done.

Prosecutors had asked for up to five years in prison before the verdict.

Hoeneß, 62, who spent four decades at Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich and also has a successful sausage business, began a three-and-a-half year jail term in June for having cheated the state out of €28.5 million.

At his four-day trial several months earlier, he admitted hiding his wealth in secret Swiss bank accounts while obsessively "gambling" on stock and currency markets.

Hoeneß and his wife will not be called as witnesses in the blackmail trial due to the defendant having confessed, the spokeswoman said.

In a statement read by his lawyer, the accused said he was a diabetes patient who could no longer afford health insurance after being 340,000 euros in debt. 

"I found myself at that time in a completely hopeless situation."

When he heard about Hoeneß sentence for millions of euros of tax evasion seemed "monstrous" compared with his own sentence. "The idea came to me spontaneously, touched off by my completely desolate situation."

SEE ALSO: Ex-Bayern president Hoeneß slims down in jail

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GERMANY AND RUSSIA

Germany, Czech Republic accuse Russia of cyberattacks

Germany and the Czech Republic on Friday blamed Russia for a series of recent cyberattacks, prompting the European Union to warn Moscow of consequences over its "malicious behaviour in cyberspace".

Published: 4 May 2024 10:29 CEST
Germany, Czech Republic accuse Russia of cyberattacks

The accusations come at a time of strained relations between Moscow and the West following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the European Union’s support for Kyiv.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said a newly concluded government investigation found that a cyberattack targeting members of the Social Democratic Party had been carried out by a group known as APT28.

APT28 “is steered by the military intelligence service of Russia”, Baerbock told reporters during a visit to Australia.

“In other words, it was a state-sponsored Russian cyberattack on Germany and this is absolutely intolerable and unacceptable and will have consequences.”

APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, has been accused of dozens of cyberattacks in countries around the world. Russia denies being behind such actions.

The hacking attack on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party was made public last year. Hackers exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook to compromise e-mail accounts, according to Berlin.

Berlin on Friday summoned the acting charge d’affaires of the Russian embassy over the incident.

The Russian embassy in Germany said its envoy “categorically rejected the accusations that Russian state structures were involved in the given incident… as unsubstantiated and groundless”.

Arms, aerospace targeted: Berlin 

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the cyber campaign was orchestrated by Russia’s military intelligence service GRU and began in 2022. It also targeted German companies in the armaments and aerospace sectors, she said.

Such cyberattacks are “a threat to our democracy, national security and our free societies”, she told a joint news conference in Prague with her Czech counterpart Vit Rakusan.

“We are calling on Russia again to stop these activities,” Faeser added.

Czech government officials said some of its state institutions had also been the target of cyberattacks blamed on APT28, again by exploiting a weakness in Microsoft Outlook in 2023.

Czech Interior Minister Rakusan said his country’s infrastructure had recently experienced “higher dozens” of such attacks.

“The Czech Republic is a target. In the long term, it has been perceived by the Russian Federation as an enemy state,” he told reporters.

EU, NATO condemnation

The German and Czech findings triggered strong condemnation from the European Union.

“The malicious cyber campaign shows Russia’s continuous pattern of irresponsible behaviour in cyberspace, by targeting democratic institutions, government entities and critical infrastructure providers across the European Union and beyond,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said.

The EU would “make use of the full spectrum of measures to prevent, deter and respond to Russia’s malicious behaviour in cyberspace”, he added.

State institutions, agencies and entities in other member states including in Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and Sweden had been targeted by APT28 in the past, the statement added.

The latest accusations come a day after NATO expressed “deep concern” over Russia’s “hybrid actions” including disinformation, sabotage and cyber interference.

The row also comes as millions of Europeans prepare to go to the polls for the European Parliament elections in June, and concerns about foreign meddling are running high.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky told AFP that “pointing a finger publicly at a specific attacker is an important tool to protect national interests”.

One of the most high-profile incidents so far blamed on Fancy Bear was a cyberattack in 2015 that paralysed the computer network of the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. It forced the entire institution offline for days while it was fixed.

In 2020, the EU imposed sanctions on individuals and entities linked to the APT28 group over the incident.

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