Complaint filed against the public prosecutor in the Haub case

Former Tengelmann boss Karl-Erivan Haub could still be alive, according to research by RTL and "Stern". Against this background, a complaint has now been lodged with the public prosecutor's office in Cologne.

Doubts are growing about the alleged accidental death of Tengelmann boss Karl-Erivan Haub. The Public Prosecutor General's Office in Cologne has now received a complaint from an RTL journalist, on the basis of which the procedure is to be reviewed as part of official supervision. At the heart of the matter is the allegation of an allegedly false affidavit made by Christian Haub, the youngest brother of the missing man and the current head of the company, which subsequently formed the basis for the declaration of death and the associated billion-euro deal within the family to settle the inheritance.

The public prosecutor's office in Cologne has so far seen no initial suspicion of a criminal offense. The RTL journalist has filed an appeal against this decision together with a criminal lawyer. From the lawyer's point of view, it is "more than doubtful" whether the responsible senior public prosecutor has dealt with the content of a criminal complaint filed by the journalist in May and the attached annexes "even remotely legally and actually within the scope of the duty to investigate imposed on him by law". The fact that Christian Haub "for the first time - out of the blue and more than two years after the disappearance of his brother - claims to have heard rumors about a staged disappearance" is "absolutely unrealistic". A report by a management consultancy from August 2020 addressed to Christian Haub, which investigates anomalies surrounding the PLUS Russia business, also clearly contradicts Haub's account.

The lawyer is calling for "formal investigation proceedings" to be initiated against Christian Haub and for the existing facts to be "clarified". In the complainant's view, there is "undoubtedly" an initial suspicion of the submission of a false affidavit.

Persistent rumors

Karl-Erivan Haub has been missing since a ski trip on the Matterhorn in 2018 and was declared dead by the Cologne District Court in May 2021. However, research by RTL and "Stern" indicated that the former Tengelmann boss could still be alive. The RTL reporter had received indications that he had been in Moscow at least part of the time in 2021. Rumors persist that the former Tengelmann boss may have deliberately caused his disappearance in Zermatt in order to start a new life in Russia.

In the case of the missing billionaire, the public prosecutor's office in Cologne refused to lift the death sentence. "There are no concrete and verifiable indications that the missing man survived beyond the time of the death declaration," the Cologne authorities told Stern. The requirements for an application to revoke the declaration of death were therefore not met.