BGH decision: The complicated case of Alexander Falk

Status: 11/23/2022 2:51 p.m

The Alexander Falk case has all the ingredients of a Hollywood thriller: vanity, greed, blackmail, revenge, a rapid rise, a deep fall. The Federal Court of Justice intervened today.

By Klaudija Schnoedewind, Mr

February 8, 2010 in the tranquil Harheim district of Frankfurt: Frankfurt lawyer Wolfgang J. leaves his house. A stranger approaches, pulls out a gun and shoots him in the leg from a distance of five meters. To this day it is unclear who the perpetrator is. Wolfgang J. has been taking legal action against the former star of the “New Economy”, Alexander Falk, since 2003 – he is pushing ahead with seizure and enforcement of millions.

Ten years later, on July 9, 2020, the Frankfurt district court sentenced Alexander Falk to four and a half years in prison for inciting this dangerous bodily harm. His defense appeals. In an appeal, only the judgment of the previous instance – i.e. that of the Frankfurt Regional Court – is checked for legal errors. If the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) allows the revision, the Falk case will be heard again in Frankfurt.

If the BGH rejects the revision, Falk would have to start the remaining prison sentence in four to eight weeks. Although his client is tense because of the many delays in the process, explains Falk’s lawyer Björn Gercke, he is certain: “No matter what happens, Falk certainly doesn’t have to go to prison anymore, only to the open prison.” Otherwise, according to Gerke, Falk is “still a wealthy man, a family man who takes care of his five children in the afternoons”.

Former child prodigy of the “New Economy”

The BGH’s decision is another chapter in the complicated Alexander Falk case. It all started promisingly: at the beginning of his career, Falk was considered a “new economy” prodigy. The 26-year-old heir to the Falk folding plans recognizes that paper city maps no longer have a future, and in the late 1990s he bets early – perhaps too early – on the internet. In 1996, together with his sister, he decided to sell the shares he inherited in the Falk plans to Bertelsmann AG for DM 50 million.

He invests his share in new Internet companies – and is successful. In his early 30s, Falk had multiplied his inherited fortune. In 2000 he sold his majority stake in his Ision Internet AG to the British telecommunications company Energis for almost 800 million euros. At that time he was one of the 100 richest Germans.

Falk and the accounting falsification

When the stock exchanges crash after the dot-com bubble burst, Ision and Energis also slide into bankruptcy – the high purchase price is fatal for the British. The suspicion quickly arises that Falk could have pumped up the sales of the Ision with bogus transactions in order to be able to demand an inflated price. He is reported for fraudulent accounting.

In June 2003, the public prosecutor’s office issued an arrest warrant against Falk on suspicion of course manipulation and fraud. He remained in custody until April 2005 and was only then provisionally released on bail of 1.5 million euros. In May 2008, after three and a half years, the court sentenced him to four years in prison for, among other things, attempted fraud and aiding and abetting in the falsification of accounts. After serving two-thirds of his sentence, Falk was released from Glasmoor Correctional Facility in August 2011.

After 32 months in prison, he is now a free man again, but as early as September 2012, Falk was sentenced in the first instance of a civil lawsuit to pay more than 200 million euros in damages to the Energis insolvency administration. A lower sum is agreed upon in a settlement. Involved in this civil lawsuit and the claims for damages, at least initially, is Wolfgang J. – the lawyer who will later be shot in the leg.

Acquaintance with the underworld

The story could end here, but the next act of the drama about the heir to the city plan has already begun at this point. Because Falk makes acquaintance with the underworld during martial arts training in prison. He meets B., who, together with his brother, has connections in the red-light and boxer milieu. Falk makes a deal with the B. brothers: Driven by proving that he was convicted innocently, the two brothers should get evidence that proves Falk’s innocence; in return, Falk helps them with a planned start-up. The brothers will later gain access to the office of Wolfgang J., the lawyer who is investigating Falk, disguised as cleaners. However, the brothers did not find any exculpatory evidence there.

Then it will be quiet for a few years around Alexander Falk. In 2017, the key witness E. got in touch and got the police work going again. E. testifies that in September 2009 Falk issued an order to kill Wolfgang J. in a Hamburg steakhouse and promised 200,000 euros for it.

Shady steakhouse meeting

At the meeting in Hamburg, Falk is said to have gotten angry with one of the B. brothers about the Frankfurt lawyer Wolfgang J. – the “lawyer bug” should be silenced. In addition, Falk is said to have made a throat-cutting gesture and pushed an envelope with 50,000 euros as an advance payment over the table. Key witness E. claims that he was there.

It will later turn out that the witness obtained a reward of 100,000 euros, which the other party had offered. Another witness who confirmed the statements of the key witness will later withdraw his statement – he was put under pressure.

“Mr. Falk is being wronged”

For Falk’s main defender, Gercke, it is clear that criminals in prison saw the entrepreneur Falk as a “golden cow that can be milked.” He is certain that the manipulated evidence was only intended for the purpose of blackmail. There is no doubt that Falk wanted to get exculpatory data. The fact that Falk was told that this data could not be obtained legally was also the case.

It is said that Falk is said to have offered up to five million euros for exculpatory data – his lawyer Gercke does not deny this. In his plea in Frankfurt, Gercke speaks of an unprecedented “money-driven false statement”. Falk has always maintained his innocence.

Cracked USB stick and suspicious “grandma SMS”

That’s why Falk fights aggressively against the adversities of the judiciary, which he sees as presenting themselves. A witness who wants to present a USB stick with evidence of Falk’s innocence at a hearing and wants to be paid handsomely for it bites the stick when the police want to secure the evidence. The presentation of exculpatory material fails because there is no projector available in the Frankfurt court. Several requests for bias by the defense against the presiding judge remain unsuccessful. Even a tape on which you can hear how happy Alexander Falk was about the news of the assassination lost its meaningfulness after a report by the Fraunhofer Institute came to the conclusion that the recording was edited up to 55 times.

And then there’s the text message from grandma: “Everything’s fine, I’ll get it if it’s necessary. We’re going to Hamburg tomorrow, we have the necessary papers to enable her grandma to go to the spa. We’ll be back here on Sunday and we’ll stay that way long time until it is clarified. Don’t worry. She will get her deserved spa stay” – this SMS, sent five days before the crime in Frankfurt Harheim, reaches Falk while paddling with his wife in South Africa. However, Falk does not have a grandmother, and it is the same with the two brothers from the prison connection.

It is clear to the prosecution that this is encrypted information about the impending attack on the lawyer. Gercke says: A clever man like Falk “would have immediately sunk his cell phone in the ocean”. Falk never replied to this text message. However, it later turns out that the number matches Falk’s prison connections.

“What’s going on in Frankfurt?”

Main defender Gercke has muted expectations for today: “We have experienced appeal lawyers such as Dr. Sebastian Wollschläger and Prof. Dr. Reinhold Schlothauer on board. Nevertheless, our expectations are muted. The probability that an appeal will go through is less than five percent .” This case is unusual in many respects and “characterized by a high level of emotionality.” According to Gercke, the matter is legally very difficult. He is friends with many prosecutors who have asked him: “What’s going on in Frankfurt?” An explanation for the chaos is to be found in Falk’s notoriety and “that Falk doesn’t put up with anything”.

Was Alexander Falk the victim of a conspiracy, or did he order the attack on the lawyer who was very uncomfortable for him? Whatever the answers to these questions, the Alexander Falk case is one of the most spectacular white-collar crimes of the post-war period – with all the ingredients for a legal thriller.

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