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Cologne (dpa) - A good three years after his disappearance in the Swiss Alps, the Cologne district court has declared billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub dead.
"The facts necessary to justify the declaration of death have been considered proven on the basis of the investigations carried out and the documents submitted," said the court's decision on Friday.
The decision is not yet final.
The co-owner of the Tengelmann retail group set out on a ski tour alone in Zermatt on April 7, 2018 and never returned.
The family assumes that the then 58-year-old had a fatal accident on the Klein Matterhorn.
The family filed an application in October last year to declare Karl-Erivan Haub dead.
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In the past few months there had been media reports about doubts about the death of the experienced skier. The court does not consider it provable. "Opinions to the contrary presented to the file are based on possibilities, assumptions and non-verifiable documents," the court stated. They are not sufficient to "remove the serious doubts about the continued existence of the missing person". Therefore, the application for a declaration of death should be granted. The court ruled April 7, 2018, midnight as the time of death.
After Karl-Erivan Haub's disappearance, his younger brother Christian took over the sole management of the Tengelmann Group.
But since then a family dispute has simmered over the redistribution of power in the multi-billion dollar retail group, which includes the textile discounter Kik and the hardware store chain Obi.
So far, the family company has belonged to a good third each to Karl-Erivan Haub and the current boss Christian Haub.
The third brother Georg Haub owns the remaining shares.
Christian, his brother Georg and the family businesses had already applied for the missing person to be declared dead in October last year.
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. In early 2021, she surprisingly changed her mind and joined the application along with her children. In April, the heirs of Karl-Erivan Haub finally agreed to sell their shares in Tengelmann Warenhandels-KG to Christian Haub, as the lawyers on both sides, Mark Binz and Peter Gauweiler, had announced. "Very tough negotiations" had been conducted. The aim is to “notarize and execute the agreed share purchase in May”.
The lawyers did not provide any information about the purchase price.
However, according to his lawyer, Christian Haub had already submitted an offer of 1.1 billion euros for the company shares of his missing brother at the end of last year.
The auditing company KPMG had estimated the company value according to Binz at around 4 billion euros.
An appeal against the decision of the court can be lodged within one month.
In addition to the applicants, anyone “who has a legal interest in the annulment of the declaration of death or in the correction of the time of death” is entitled to do so, according to the decision.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210514-99-598155 / 2