Before Karl-Erivan Haub disappeared from the Matterhorn six years ago, he had connections in the highest circles of German business and politics. Then came an avalanche of phone calls, writes The Times.
In a cafe not far from the Russian embassy in Berlin, Liv von Boetticher admits that the story she is about to tell is “crazier than a James Bond movie”.
Karl-Erivan Haub, the German-American billionaire who disappeared during a skiing trip in Switzerland six years ago and was initially thought to have died in an accident, Boetticher tells The Times, could have been a Russian agent who descended the Matterhorn before being taken to Moscow.
Boetticher, who works for RTL television and has written a book about his findings, investigated Haub’s disappearance on April 7, 2018, which prompted a rescue operation. The helicopters and rescue teams that searched the slopes and crevasses.
No trace of it was found, although the search conditions were perfect, with snow so clean that bird tracks could be seen. The Times consulted a report by investigators employed by the Tengelmann retail group, who concluded it was highly unlikely he died in an accident.
Conveyor belt calls
The report revealed a flood of calls from his phone to numbers in Russia in the month before his disappearance, particularly to a Russian woman named Veronika Ermilova, an employee of an event agency, Russian Event, based in St. Petersburg.
The list of calls made on Haub’s phone indicates that he and Ermilova spoke four times on the evening of April 5, 2018, after which Haub contacted the pilot of his private jet and told him that he wanted to change the destination of an upcoming trip – Les Deux Alpes in France – and fly instead to the village of Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn the next day.
After landing in Switzerland on April 6, Haub contacted Ermilova again and she made a train reservation for the next day, the day of the disappearance, Boetticher said. That evening, the two spoke on the phone twice more for about an hour and a half.
Ermilova recently spoke to Russian reporters downplaying her relationship with Haub. “She says she barely knew him, which is obviously not true as our investigation and internal records show,” Boetticher said.
One of the theories
One theory advanced by investigators was that Haub skied down to Cervina in the Italian Alps and was taken from there because he was concerned that his ties to shady business partners in Russia would be discovered by the CIA.
Haub was pronounced dead in May 2021 following a power struggle between his “widow” Katrin and his brother Christian, even though Tengelmann’s own investigators had by then gathered a wealth of information suggesting he was alive, including two images taken from the Moscow surveillance camera system of a man who bore a striking resemblance to him, Boetticher said.
“Through one source I was able to look at these photos several times during my research, most recently in the presence of a lawyer,” she said.
“I think these photos would be admissible as evidence in court. The photos were taken from different distances. One is taken very close and the other is taken from a slightly higher height and further away. On Kolomenskaya Street in Moscow. Only he can be seen. The photos are dated February 2021″.
Friends in high positions
Following pressure from Boetticher, the Cologne prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the case this month, six years after Haub’s disappearance. She filed a complaint alleging that Christian gave a false affidavit in 2021 when he stated that he had no information that Karl-Erivan might still be alive.
“There is a question of why,” she said. “Karl-Erivan is German and American. He has connections in the highest circles of politics and business. His family is a major donor to political parties in Germany and, as far as I know, the US. We don’t know to what extent it played some sort of role in influencing policy. Internal investigators fear that he may have acted as some sort of Russian agent, using his business position to do so.”
The results of Tengelmann’s internal investigation have not been presented to German authorities, Boetticher said. “This is all the more striking as the FBI and CIA were on the scene in Zermatt and Tengelmann’s crisis manager was questioned by the FBI and CIA. This begs the question: What does American intelligence know that the German authorities might not know?”
“They knew something”
A spokesman for Tengelmann, Matthias Goldbeck, said: “Please understand that we will not be making any further comment on this matter.” Haub’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, the details of the case are surprising.
Boetticher was informed that two days after the frantic search for the billionaire began, a mysterious couple with Eastern European accents and no ski or mountain gear checked into the luxury hotel The Omnia in Zermatt, unusually paying in cash .
Investigators described the couple as “visibly low-key” and said they spent most of their time “haunting” around the hallway near the room from which search efforts were being coordinated. Boetticher said he later tracked down the man, who told him he was a member of the Spetsnaz — the Russian special forces — and had fought in the Caucasus War, but had no connection to Russian intelligence.
“The conversation was absolutely confusing and disturbing, and I find it a great scandal that neither the Swiss nor the German authorities ever questioned these people,” Boetticher said. “From my point of view, they know something, they were there and they noticed the hotel for a reason.”
Following Haub’s disappearance, Tengelmann investigators tracked down Ermilova and discovered that she regularly visited a building in central Moscow, the Russian Research Center for Rehabilitation and Recovery. It is believed to be a beauty clinic, leading to speculation that Haub may have undergone surgery there to change his appearance.
Two outside investigators hired by Tengelmann’s team to help the Russian side of the investigation – a former Stasi liaison officer to Vladimir Putin during his time as a KGB spy in Dresden in the 1980s and a former member of the German military intelligence service MAD – died during the investigation. The first died of cancer and the second of a “sudden pulmonary embolism”.
Surveillance and strange calls
Boetticher herself was warned that she was taking risks by continuing her own investigation into Germany and Russia. “After arriving in Moscow, I immediately received calls from Russian numbers. I was warned that malware might be transferred to my phone,” she said.
“During the course of the investigation, there were several times when our footage was monitored. Also, my devices have shown anomalies several times. There have also been very critical developments, which I cannot talk about at this time for legal reasons.”
Boetticher’s book about his investigation, The Tengelmann File, published last year, reveals a power struggle within the Haub family, which owns a multibillion-euro business with a global workforce of 75,000. The book follows the search to find out what Haub, 58, was up to at the time of his disappearance.
She is in talks to publish it in the UK and America. Asked what her gut feeling was after years of research, Boetticher said: “I don’t know if he’s still alive, but I personally don’t believe in a mountain accident in Zermatt. And from all the information we have, I suspect that he expected to have trouble in the West because of his business connections, and that American intelligence already had him in their sights. According to internal files, that’s also the theory of internal investigators.”
She said Haub’s relationship with Ermilova remained a mystery. “We can obviously see that they have a close connection. But we don’t know if it’s a private relationship, or if it’s a business relationship, or if she had a role in manipulating him, telling him what to do.”
“If we look at the trips they took together, it seems to us that it was not a private or purely private relationship, but that she had a role in getting him from A to B. Another clue is that the trips were always very short. What are you doing for a few hours in Omsk?”
“I was shocked at how this powerful company and family were conducting their own investigations, away from the public eye, and also deciding what was made public and what was not,” Boetticher added. Despite all the evidence, she said she still has a doubt about the accident hypothesis. “I won’t know for sure until I see him in the flesh.”
Tags: billionaire missing skiing accident Russian agent story crazier James Bond movie
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