In the legal dispute over the construction of a new hotel building at Schillerstrasse 3, criminal charges are now being raised. The Grünwald real estate company Concrete Capital, which wants to construct the building with 269 rooms and ten company apartments for “Motel One”, accuses the neighbors, who obtained a construction freeze in court, of attempted blackmail. The Milchiker family, who were attacked in this way and who run the hotel “Schiller 5” next door, announced in return through their lawyer that they would file a criminal complaint for defamation.
Concrete Capital, which largely belongs to the family of racing driver and real estate investor Hubert Haupt, hired lawyer Wolf-Rüdiger Bub, who represented Leo Kirch against Deutsche Bank and ran his law firm together with Peter Gauweiler until 2019 . Bub derives the allegation of attempted blackmail from negotiations between the two parties about an amicable agreement against payment of a sum of money. According to the SZ, these resulted in a “letter of intent” at the end of October, in which the Milchiker family offered to pay 2.8 million euros or 1.95 million euros and a three percent stake in Concrete Capital for all lawsuits and to withdraw a petition submitted to the state parliament against the building project. Haupt and his managing director Peter Fritsche ultimately rejected the deal.
The main issue in the proceedings is whether the new building could dam up the groundwater in such a way that neighboring buildings would be damaged. The municipal department for climate and environmental protection (RKU) had issued a water law permit, against which the neighbors sued, so far twice with success in summary proceedings. The construction freeze, which has been in effect since August, “according to current estimates, costs us around 200,000 euros every month,” says Peter Fritsche from Concrete Capital. The total investment volume is around 100 million euros.
“Criminal,” says one lawyer – “completely ridiculous,” says the other
It is legitimate for the neighbors to take legal action, says lawyer Bub, just as one can negotiate whether the dispute can be settled amicably. However, the money demand in the room fulfills “in my view the criminal offense of attempted extortion, the actions of the lawyer Ziegler could be an accessory,” explains Bub. “For me, the relevance under criminal law results from the incorrect purpose-means relation, i.e. the disproportion between the monetary claim of the direct neighbor and the damage that he may be threatened with in the event of flooding.” According to experts, this damage would amount to 24,000 euros in the worst case, according to Bub, which is offset by the claim in the millions. The Milchiker family used their position “to extort a completely unreasonable sum of money,” said Bub, adding that it was “criminal.” Criminal charges have not yet been filed, “it is an official offense in which the public prosecutor’s office must take action if they become aware of the allegation”.
The opposing lawyer Benno Ziegler vehemently contradicts Bub’s account: Because Concrete Capital has “always failed in court and hasn’t made any progress, they are now trying to accuse my clients of greed and criminal behavior. We will defend ourselves against this with all legal means and file a criminal complaint for defamation,” said Ziegler. He feels reminded of the actions of his colleague Bub that his law firm hired a journalist from Wirecard for Wirecard Financial Times “wanted to deal with criminal charges,” said Ziegler, although the case at hand is of course much smaller.
Ziegler also contradicts the allegation of a criminal offense in terms of content. In reality, it was Hubert Haupt “who approached my client to end the issue with a monetary payment.” Therefore, the allegation of attempted blackmail is “completely ridiculous”. When asked, Bub explained that in a conversation initiated by the other side, Haupt had once put the sum of 1.5 million in the room, but that was not an official offer. In further talks, the amount that was being talked about apparently increased to 2.8 million euros.
Ziegler emphasizes that it is not just about compensating for possible water damage: the construction of the large “Motel One” threatened his clients’ significantly greater damage to their four-star hotel operations. The enormously increasing traffic will make Schillerstrasse 5 more difficult to reach, the value of the property will drop, “my clients wanted to protect themselves against this”.