BERLIN - 'I LIVE off money that women give me,' the so-called 'Swiss gigolo' told his country's police in 2001. But when he allegedly tried to hoodwink BMW heiress Susanne Klatten, it looks like Helg Sgarbi got too greedy.
On Monday Sgarbi goes on trial in Munich charged with blackmailing a string of super-rich women out of millions of euros. If convicted, the smooth-talking Sgarbi, who told his wealthy conquests he was a 'special Swiss representative in crisis zones', according to the charge sheet, faces up to 10 years in prison.
According to prosecutors he first met Ms Klatten, who has a personal fortune of over US$13 billion (S$20 billion) according to the Forbes Rich List, at the Lanserhof exclusive Austrian health resort in July 2007.
At first the married mother-of-three spurned his advances but when Sgarbi turned up unexpectedly in the south of France where she was on holiday the following month, they began an affair. Later in August they met in a Holiday Inn hotel in Munich - suitably downmarket for Ms Klatten not to run into any acquaintances - for an 'intimate' encounter that Sgarbi secretly filmed, according to the charge sheet.
In September they met at the same hotel and this time Sgarbi allegedly said that he needed 10 million euros because he had injured a little girl in a car crash in Florida - asking Ms Klatten to lend him a cool seven million euros.
Ms Klatten believed him, handing over the sum in the underground garage of the Holiday Inn a cardboard box containing seven plastic folders each containing a thousand 500-euro banknotes.
But then Sgarbi went for the big one, telling the 46-year-old to leave her husband and put into a trust fund 290 million euros to fund their new life together.
Ms Klatten balked, and ended the relationship. But then Sgarbi turned nasty, according to prosecutors, threatening to send compromising video footage of the two together to the press and to her husband, among others.
This time he allegedly demanded 49 million euros, which he subsequently reduced to 14 million euros, and set a deadline of Jan 15 last year. But she had long since informed the police, and Sgarbi was arrested. -- AFP
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