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Cologne (dpa) - Tengelmann boss Karl-Erivan Haub, who has been missing since April 2018, could be declared dead in May.
The district court of Cologne issued on Tuesday at the request of the wife and children of the missing billionaire, his brother Christian and two family businesses, the list in the so-called death declaration procedure, as a justice spokeswoman announced.
The missing billionaire is requested in the list, which is published in the “Bundesanzeiger” and “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” and displayed in the court, to inform the Cologne District Court of his whereabouts by May 12th.
Otherwise he can be pronounced dead.
Everyone who can provide information about the missing person is requested to report to the court by this date.
If by then there are indications of the whereabouts of the missing person, the court will examine whether and in what way it is pursuing this as part of an official investigation.
Karl-Erivan Haub, one of the richest Germans, set out on a ski tour alone in the Swiss Alps on April 7, 2018 and never returned.
The family assumes that he had a fatal accident on the Klein Matterhorn near Zermatt.
His younger brother Christian then took over sole management of the Tengelmann Group.
He, his brother Georg and the family businesses had already applied for the missing person to be declared dead in October.
Georg Haub, however, withdrew his application in mid-January.
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The application for a declaration of death was initially sharply criticized by the wife of the missing person, Katrin Haub.
"It is very strange that someone else presumes that they want to make such decisions for our family," said Katrin Haub of the German Press Agency at the time via a spokesman.
But the wife and children surprisingly changed their minds in early 2021 and joined the application.
Since the disappearance of Karl-Erivan Haub, a family quarrel about the redistribution of power in the multi-billion dollar trading group has been simmering.
With the application for a declaration of death, the pressure increased on Katrin Haub and her children to sell the shares of their family line.
After all, the children have to be prepared for inheritance tax payments in the hundreds of millions.
But there is now apparently a certain rapprochement between the quarreling family lines.
Christian Haub told Wirtschaftswoche a few days ago that it would be of no use to anyone to “pour oil on the fire”.
That is why it was agreed not to speak publicly about family issues in order to give the unification process a chance of success.
"I hope that we will get a solution wrapped up this year," said Haub.
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Applications for a declaration of death are rather rare.
In the Cologne district court, only five or six of the 60,000 cases received last year affected this issue, it was said in the cathedral city.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210316-99-847649 / 2