gunter sachs fortune

 

Reinicke directed two of the companies on the Cook Islands, and acted either as manager or member of the administrative board in the four Luxembourg companies as well. In May 2006, Mr. Sachs sold Warhol’s silk screen of Ms. Bardot at auction for $3 million. As of Wednesday afternoon, he has given no reply to the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s questions. It is believed that the wise man is not subjected to stellar influences. When Mr. Sachs and Ms. Larsson married in 1969, she told Time magazine: “I’m not afraid of his past. I knew him since the late 50s. Translation: Jan Schönherr. The executors offered no comment on this company. Now another aspect has come to light about Gunter Sachs: a man who set up an intricate offshore scheme to manage his vast fortune, a scheme that remained inscrutable to the fiscal authorities until the end. Ein Grab des verstorbenen Gunter Sachs freilich ist nirgends auszumachen, als die GlücksPost letzte Woche den Friedhof besuchte. Nachstehend ist eine 12x12-Felder-Tafel aus "Gunter Sachs: Die Akte Astrologie - Wissenschaftlicher Nachweis eines Zusammenhangs zwischen den Sternzeichen und dem menschlichen Verhalten" als Kopie wiedergegeben - ergänzt durch drei handschriftlich vom Autor der Klausuraufgabe eingetragene Randwerte (=Randsummen), die die erforderlichen numerischen Rechnungen erleichtern. As the ICIJ offshore documents show, Sachs did in fact participate in the management of his tax haven companies. The inventory of Sachs’s estate also reveals the magnitude of the issue: Sachs’s fortune at the time of his death is listed at 470 million Swiss francs. Fritz Gunter Sachs was born on Nov. 14, 1932, in Schweinfurt, Germany. Chinese astrology is brought to us as a legacy of age-old wisdom and invites us to develop an awareness of our inner potential. Porträt von Gunter Sachs in der Aktuellen Stunde des WDR 8.5.2011. No declaration of intention by the founder.”. An ideal place to minimize one’s tax burden, be it legally or illegally. mals ein Interview mit Gunter Sachs, einem der schillerndsten Männer der deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte: Ex-Ehemann von Brigitte Bardot, Erbe des Industrie-Imperiums Fichtel & Sachs, er-folgreicher Fotograf und Bestsellerautor, profilierter Kunstsammler und prämierter Dokumentarfilmer, Deutschlands einzi-ger Playboy von Rang. November 1932 in Mainberg bei Schweinfurt; 6. In managing his companies in the South Seas, Gunter Sachs put extreme stress on secrecy. He was secretly secret and anonymously anonymous. These five trusts were the opaque containers in which Sachs stored parts of his fortune. But Gunter Sachs himself demonstrably had access to the funds of two of those trusts as well, and was therefore liable to declare them. and the NDR examined the offshore leak data provided by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and discovered dozens of documents to reconstruct Gunter Sachs’s offshore scheme. Sachs’s company is called “Dirki Finance S.A.;” his cousin’s bears the name “Muraccio Investment S.A.” There has to be a connection between the two companies: both were founded on the same day, on September 16, 1977, and both employ the same two Swiss trustees as directors. Dozens of faxes, letters and emails going back and forth between the lawyers and International Trust Corporation Ltd. (later called Portcullis TrustNet) attest to this fact. Galaxar is his “family office”, a company solely concerned with the management and increase of his fortune. Später erwarb er sich an der Universität Nantes noch ein Diplom als Dolmetsc… There were Lenz & Staehelin’s lawyers, of course, but also a company he had founded in Geneva under the mysterious name of “Galaxar S.A.”. According to those documents, two of the companies own real estate whose book value is well below their market value. By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 20:51 EDT, 9 May 2011 Der deutsche Unternehmer, Fotograf und „ewige Playboy“ Gunter Sachs ist im Alter von 78 Jahren in seinem Chalet im Schweizer Gstaad tot aufgefunden worden. But the list of offshore companies goes on: SZ research shows that Gunter Sachs held shares of four companies founded between 2003 and 2008 in the tax havens of the British Virgin Islands, Jersey and Luxembourg. Additionally, the law firm took care of the annual payments of around 2,000 dollars per trust to Portcullis Trustnet for all those years. Sie waren das Traumpaar der 60er-Jahre: Playboy Gunter Sachs (†78) und die französische Schauspielerin Brigitte … He was married to Mirja Sachs, Brigitte Bardot and Anne-Marie Faure. • Gunter Sachs, playboy, industrialist and photographer, born 14 November 1932; died 7 May 2011 Warum aber ertrug er sein Leben nicht mehr? Get our stories by email. Es war die Woche, His name must not appear in any official document, for such is the nature of an anonymous enterprise. The executors deny they failed to adequately declare the companies’ value to the authorities. His family owned Fichtel & Sachs, a manufacturer of car and motorcycle parts, founded by his grandfather Ernst Sachs. Gunter Sachs, Producer: Happening in Weiß. For years his name did not appear in Portcullis’ customer files – a highly unusual exception. Within months Mr. Sachs was married again, to Mirja Larsson, a Swedish model. Staehelin also managed Sachs’s offshore companies over the next two decades. His family said Mr. Sachs, who had an incurable degenerative disease, committed suicide. Gunter Sachs war reich, beliebt und erfolgreich - und trotzdem setzte er seinem Leben vorzeitig ein Ende. Now it is getting complicated, but it is worth to take a closer look: According to official documents, those companies temporarily had capital assets of about 9 milllion Swiss francs ($9.6 million) at their disposal. In Lausanne studierte er Mathematik und Wirtschaft, bei Bosch in Stuttgart ließ er sich zum Feinmechaniker ausbilden, anschließend folgte eine Lehre als Bankkaufmann bei der Commerzbank in München. In the morning of January 22, 1976, ten tax officials searched Sachs’s farmhouse in the Rechenau region, while five others went through his Munich office. In him I’ve found the husband I always dreamed of.”, Gunter Sachs, Ex-Husband of Brigitte Bardot, Dies at 78, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/world/europe/10sachs.html. When the marriage ended three years later, The New York Times referred to Mr. Sachs as “someone who has been linked romantically at some time or other with half the great beauties in Europe.”. The notorious bon vivant “Sexy Sachs”, as the yellow press dubbed him in the sixties, is said to have often been working there in the early morning. According to the official register in Panama, however, it still operates today. According to a former employee, almost 30 people all over the world were busy with Sachs’s real estate in Europe and the USA, his art collection, his cars and his yachts. Sachs ist Enkel des deutschen Firmengründers Ernst Sachs (Fichtel & Sachs, heute ZF Sachs). Therefore, Swiss law demands they be declared, just like all kinds of international income, property or investment,” says Andreas Kolb, a tax attorney who specializes on wealthy private clients. The only reply was a letter by the two executors, who are in contact with the heirs but do not officially speak on their behalf. Saturday, May 6, 2011. 1966 heiratete er das Sex-Symbol Brigitte Bardot, die Schauspielerin. In fact, however, that is just a smokescreen, put up to avoid mentioning the real owner’s name. There may even be fines involved, says Kolb, “if they failed to declare assets against their better judgment.”. And that is not all: SZ journalists discovered Gunter Sachs also had shares in companies based in other tax havens, apparently with values and debts in the high millions. Gunter Sachs, who committed suicide at his chalet in Gstaad on Saturday aged 78, was a multi-millionaire German playboy, scion of the Opel motor dynasty, European bobsleigh champion of … The German-born millionaire, womanizer, photographer, art collector and man-about-globe had followed the fast-living course of his life to its end: Better to go out with a bang than with a whimper (Sachs was believed to have Alzheimer’s disease). Gunter Sachs 14.11.1932 - 7.5.2011 Porträt WDR - YouTube. Now another aspect has come to light about Gunter Sachs: a man who set up an intricate offshore scheme to manage his vast fortune, a scheme that remained inscrutable to the fiscal authorities until the end. Washington DC 20036 USA, © 2021 — The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Tax fraud is only an administrative offence in Switzerland, and whether it has been committed intentionally or unintentionally has no bearing on the case. Il passe la plus grande partie de son enfance en Suisse à Lausanne, où il poursuit ses études. The hand that governs everything must remain invisible. No info on bank data. Thus, it remains unclear, whether or which of the trusts’ funds have indeed been officially declared. His collection included works by Magritte, Kandinsky, Francis Bacon and Max Ernst as well as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann. I feel mad, serene, wonderstruck. The tax authorities of the Canton of Bern, Sachs’s last place of residence, take a different view on the legal situation. Ses deux grands-pères sont des inventeurs et des industriels allemands dans le secteur automobile : son grand-père paternel est Ernst Sachs, l'un des deux fondateurs de Fichtel & Sachs, d'où lui vient sa fortune ; son grand-père maternel est Wilhelm von Opel (en), fils d'Adam Opel, fondateur d'Opel. Even before private secretary Hanswerner Schwenk set off for his trip to the South Seas in 1993, most formalities had already been dealt with. He was an actor and producer, known for Happening in Weiß (1969), Batouk (1967) and Cardillac (1969). It certainly must not sign anything. Warum? Swiss fiscal law expert Andreas Kolb says the signing lawyers will face legal consequences “if they can be proven to have participated in or incited to tax fraud”. Meanwhile, the man behind the scenes can relax: in London, Paris or St. Tropez, on one of his many estates. Gunter Sachs with wife Mirja posing between trees at their estate in Sankt Tropez, France 2004. Once referred to as “the German Lothario” by Time magazine, Mr. Sachs became a well-known figure in the art world. Latest from Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze, Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze, the trust’s beneficiaries were Sachs’s three sons Rolf, Christian Gunnar and Claus Alexander, he put all his eggs into the same basket: the discreet Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. That was the Sachs Scheme, secretly functioning for many years, and profitable for a large number of people: Sachs himself, his sons (as beneficiaries of some of the trusts), Samir Sibaei, and all the various contractors, of course, the lawyers, directors, administrative board members, trustees and managers of the offshore companies. Officially, the sole owner of Triton Ltd. is a company called Trustcorp Ltd., who, on paper, also owns a large number of other companies. To the day of Sachs’s death, Galaxar was managed by the German economist and political scientist Wolfgang Reinicke, a former World Bank advisor. At the very least, he was involved in various places:  as a director and trustee of the South Sea enterprises, and as member of the family office’s administrative board. Es war eine stürmische Ehe, die nur drei Jahre hielt. Gunter Sachs war der „große deutsche Gentleman-Playboy“. The Swiss business magazine Bilanz estimated Gunter Sachs’s fortune at $340 million to $455 million. When he and his brother became Swiss citizens and moved to Switzerland in the seventies, and then tried to sell their shares in Fichtel & Sachs for about 330 million Deutschmarks soon after, tax authorities swiftly took action. Undaunted, Ms. Bardot said at the time: “I have never known a man like him. Gunter’s father was also an … But Gunter Sachs is dead, and the only remaining question is what consequences all this will entail here and now. Documents stating the amount invested in the trusts do exist. There are various letters, personally written by him, in which he announces the appointment or dismissal of a trustee with the legally correct clause “in exercise of the right conferred me as the trust’s founder.”. At age 78, Gunter Sachs, one of the last living international men of mystery, took his own life with a gunshot to the head at his Gstaad chalet. Gunter Sachs was born on November 14, 1932 in Schloss Mainberg nr. That real estate probably served as security for the bank debts, and must therefore be accordingly valuable. They are each registered as presidents and legal representatives of a company there. (which some have speculated to be Alzheimer's ) adding that "The loss of mental control over my life was an undignified condition, which I decided to counter decisively". Gunter Sachs with Brigitte Bardot in 1966. “Assets in such trusts are attributed to the trust’s founder. When asked by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wolfgang Reinicke did not want to comment on this and merely referred to the executors’ statement. This is probably a mere anecdote, and there may not be much truth to it. Once before Gunter Sachs was at the heart of a tax scandal. Gunnar, owner of Aspen’s star-studded and sleek restaurant Elevation for the last 13 years, is traveling between the Caribbean, Gstaad, and Aspen. Gunter Sachs and his family with wife Mirja and his sons Christian Gunnar and Claus Alexander at the table in Sankt Tropez, France 2004. Numerous inquiries to the deceased’s heirs, to his lawyers and business partners, remained largely unanswered. Sub-participations need not necessarily be declared, but “if they are not, the holding company itself absolutely has to be correctly appraised,” says Andrea Opel, a tax law professor at the University of Lucerne. He was 78. Swiss photographer, author, industrialist and astrological researcher, of German origin. On September 15, 1993, a lawyer of the major Zurich law firm Lenz & Staehelin had already registered “Triton Ltd.” by fax. These documents include deeds and contracts, photocopied ID cards and accounts of charges, a vast amount of internal emails and faxes, but also letters by Gunter Sachs, bearing his own signature. Eldest son Rolf, domiciled in London, is an elemental feature of St. Moritz society. Gunter Sachs wird als Künstler und für die, die ihn verehrten und liebten, unvergessen bleiben. Biography. In a suicide note the family released, Mr. Sachs said, “The loss of mental control over my life was an undignified condition which I decided to counter decisively.”. The “Company Kit”, a sort of starter set for shell corporations, was on its way to Zurich soon after. Shiny happy people: Gunter and Mirja Sachs in 1993 (Image: Getty). He was a great-grandson of Adam Opel, the founder of what would become the Opel automobile company. By Bastian Obermayer, Frederik Obermaier, Titus Plattner and Miranda Patrucić. Sibaei had been Sachs’s constant companion for 50 years: as a college friend, as best man at Sachs’s first wedding and, for a while, as his secretary. Even Switzerland’s rather soft taxation system seems to have been enough to entice Sachs to come up with strategies of tax evasion. It will show the many aspects of his personality everyone had known so far: playboy and millionaire’s heir, Brigitte Bardot’s husband and lover of Empress Soraya, photographer, director, art collector, philanthropist and good friend. In a case of rare luck, the deceased playboy had been born not into one, but two family dynasties: His father, the industrialist Willy Sachs, owned the engine works “Fichtel und Sachs” – selling off most of his shares must have later made Sachs more than 200 million Deutschmarks. From 1965 to 1972, Mr. Sachs was president of the Modern Art Museum in Munich. Rarotonga is situated about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii, and it takes him more than 40 hours to get there from Germany. Its price: 2,700 dollars. Gunter Sachs (1973) photo: unknown, license fair-use. The Cook Islands, an archipelago of which Rarotonga is a part, are a typical offshore tax haven: Founding a company or trust there means paying almost no taxes at all and, above all, total anonymity. This story was first published in Süddeutsche Zeitung. *) Ergänzung für die Fortgeschrittenen in Astrologie unter Ihnen: Gleichzeitig fanden natürlich weitere Planeten-Aktivierungen statt, die hier nicht alle angeführt werden sollen. Now, however, another aspect has come to light – that of a man who set up an intricate offshore scheme to manage his vast fortune, a scheme that remained inscrutable to tax authorities until the end. Im Februar nächsten Jahres, sagte sein Sohn Rolf (52) nach der Abdankung, werde in St. Moritz eine Gedenkfeier für alle stattfinden. He’s known as Brigitte Bardot’s husband, photographer, director, art collector. They also had bank debts of about 77 million Swiss francs ($81 million) and owned a lot of real estate in Switzerland. According to the Parkland Oak Trust’s charter from May 18, 1994, the trust’s beneficiaries were Sachs’s three sons Rolf, Christian Gunnar and Claus Alexander. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use, Support ICIJ today and help us find new global investigations that shake the world, ICIJ is dedicated to ensuring all reports we publish are accurate. Gunter Sachs was born under the sign of the Monkey, element Water. April 5, 2013. The crucial document here is the inventory of Sachs’s estate. The Swiss business magazine Bilanz estimated Gunter Sachs’s fortune at $340 million to $455 million. The inventory of his estate was drawn up by two executors and signed on July 6, 2012. Soon it was the most fashionable place in the world to be seen. Ein Nachruf. Indeed, the last of those three men still alive, finance undersecretary Albert Meyer, says he neither remembers this event nor the three of them ever having been in the same room with Sachs at all. Gunter was always somewhat mysterious. In his wilder days, Parisian dailies called him “Saxy.” And when he married Ms. Bardot (his second wife) in July 1966 a few weeks after they met, Newsweek, labeled it a “Franco-German alliance” and wrote of Mr. Sachs’s reputation as “a big lady killer.”. One of them is precisely the Lenz & Staehelin lawyer who founded the first South Sea company by fax in 1993 and then went on to become the director and trustee of Sachs’s companies. The man in whose employ Hanswerner Schwenk made that trip to the South Sea, almost twenty years ago, in November 1993, is very famous and very rich. Too tight-lipped, it seems, by the standards of the law. Gunter Sachs gilt als Archetyp eines Playboys: Er war der Mann, der mit dem französischen Superstar Brigitte Bardot verheiratet war. He’s known as Brigitte Bardot’s husband, photographer, director, art collector. Gunter Sachs, the playboy who married Brigitte Bardot, kills himself at 78. But Sachs also enlisted professional help. The suicide note stated that he acted because of what he defined as "hopeless illness A." That is why Hanswerner Schwenk, a private secretary in his 50s, sets off for the Pacific island of Rarotonga. Help us change the world. The letter states: “All assets belonging to the testator Gunter Sachs at the time of his death are listed in the inventory of his estate and in the inheritance tax return filed with the appropriate revenue authorities.” All of these assets, the executors assert, had “already been disclosed during Herr Sachs’s lifetime for the purposes of his income and property tax return.”. Gunter Sachs, a wealthy German-born art collector who was fodder for gossip columns in the 1960s for his playboy antics and his brief marriage to Brigitte Bardot, died on Saturday at his home in the Swiss Alpine resort of Gstaad. In his mind, the authorities’ investigations “culminated in envy.” In his autobiography, he describes a meeting with “three important gentlemen of the world of finance.”  Without thinking, he told them: “If our names were Müller, Maier and Huber [three rather common German names], we wouldn’t be here.” The three gentlemen, he adds, were called Müller, Meyer and Huber. If you believe you have found an inaccuracy, During the last few weeks, a team of journalists from. When questioned, the two men claimed not to remember any details; von Opel could not be reached by the SZ. Gunter Sachs, Fotograf, Frauenheld, Freigeist, hat sich mit 78 Jahren in seinem Chalet in Gstaad erschossen. Gunter Sachs - the German-born billionaire, art collector and former husband of Brigitte Bardot - has killed himself at the age of 78. Gstaad - Der Fotograf, Kunstsammler und Playboy Gunter Sachs ist tot. Hanswerner Schwenk’s mission: confirm with his signature that the share issue of the recently founded company Triton Ltd. proceeded in a lawful way. Only where the revenue authorities were concerned, however, the gifted entertainer seems to have been rather tight-lipped. The documents provide detailed evidence of how Sachs, with the help of some advisors, constructed an anonymous network of companies on the Cook Islands. At least his local partner, the International Trust Corporation Ltd., has arranged for a hotel and a rental car. His maternal uncle, Fritz von Opel, was the heir to the Opel car fortune and lived the grand life in St. Moritz and St. Tropez, where he had opulent houses. The same goes for three of the other trusts. That marriage lasted until his death. For it is entirely possible that Sachs and his executors merely lost track of their vast and complicated offshore scheme. Up to now, there are eleven offshore companies whose existence is unknown to the tax authorities. Gunter Sachs has returned from the USA to his Chalet, an old farmhouse, in the Swiss town of Gstaad. His name is Gunter Sachs. However, according to sources close to him, Sachs had a fully equipped office in each of his many apartments and houses (13, at the time of his death). With him in the chalet were his butler and his best friend, Samir Sibaei. In his younger years his public image was that of the archetypal rich playboy. The South Seas Scheme looked as follows: Two shell corporations, Triton Ltd. and another company called Tantris Ltd., acted as trustees for five trusts set up between 1994 and 2007 – the Moon Crystal Trust, the Espan Water Trust, the Sequoia Trust, the Triton Trust and the Parkland Oak Trust. Schwenk had been working for him for more than twenty years at the time, and was one of his closest confidants. And the providers of the shell corporations. To no avail. Besides his wife, Mr. Sachs is survived by their sons, Christian and Alexander, and his son, Rolf, from his first marriage, to Anne-Marie Faure, who died in a car accident in 1958. Fritz Gunter Sachs (* 14. Only two of the four companies are mentioned in Sachs’s tax returns and the inventory of his estate, and they seem to be listed well below their actual value: the superordinate holding company Sunrise Water at zero, K-Berg at 60,000 Swiss francs ($64,000). Als Mann von Brigitte Bardot wurde der Opel-Nachfahre weltbekannt. For this is Trust Corporation Ltd.’s business model: They set up anonymous shell corporations and trusts, and then manage them with absolute discretion. Gunter Sachs felt he was being persecuted. Abschiedsbrief veröffentlicht:Gunter Sachs ist tot: „Ausweglose Krankheit“. The electronic files of three of his trusts show the following note by an employee, dating from April 1999: “No information on the founder, apparently top secret.