Liechtenstein | intelNews.org

CEO of private bank shot dead in Liechtenstein

April 9, 2014 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

Bank Frick By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The chief executive officer of a private bank in the alpine principality of Liechtenstein has been shot dead at the bank’s headquarters, according to reports. Liechtenstein police said Monday that a 48-year-old bank executive had been shot dead inside the underground car park of the bank’s headquarters. The report said the fatal shooting took place in the village of Balzers, located near Liechtenstein’s border with Switzerland. The police statement did not name the bank or the executive. Later on Monday, however, Swiss news outlet Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (The Voice of Switzerland) identified the shooting victim as Jürgen Frick, CEO of Bank Frick. Headquartered in Balzers, the family-run bank was founded in 1998 as a private financial establishment. In addition to its Liechtenstein office, Bank Frick also maintains a branch in London’s Mayfair district, in the United Kingdom. Liechtenstein police said on Monday it was looking for a suspected gunman, identified as Jürgen Hermann, a former fund manager, who was spotted in the bank’s surveillance cameras around the time of the shooting. Hermann, who lives in Liechtenstein’s Mauren municipality, was also seen fleeing the scene of the crime in Smart car. Swiss media later reported that Hermann describes himself on his personal website as “the Robin Hood of Liechtenstein” and as the tax-haven’s “public enemy No. 1”. German media said Hermann has been involved in longstanding feuds with the government of Liechtenstein over “financial issues”. In his website, the suspected shooter has uploaded statements demanding that the government of Liechtenstein returns to him “investments worth millions”, which were allegedly “destroyed by the financial mafia of Liechtenstein”. The principality’s police say they found Hermann’s driver license and passport thrown by the side of a road near the river Rhine, and suspect that Hermann might have killed himself. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with Balzers (Liechtenstein), Bank Frick, Jürgen Frick, Jürgen Hermann, Liechtenstein, News, suspicious deaths

Analysis: An Economic Security Role for European Spy Agencies?

May 10, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Economic spying

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last February, Spain’s intelligence service began investigating alleged suspicious efforts by foreign financial speculators to destabilize the Spanish economy. According to newspaper El País, the Spanish government asked the country’s Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) to probe links between speculative moves in world financial markets and a series of damaging editorials “in the Anglo-Saxon media”. There are indications that the National Intelligence Service of Greece (EYP) is following in the CNI’s footsteps. In February, when Athens and Brussels began to realize the magnitude of the financial crisis threatening the European common currency, several news outlets suggested that the EYP was cooperating with Spanish, Irish and Portuguese intelligence services in investigating a series of coordinated speculative attacks on money markets, most of which allegedly originated from London and Washington. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with 2008 Liechtenstein tax affair, Belgium, BND, Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (Spain), China, CIA, CIA Directorate of Intelligence, Cold War, Dennis Cutler Blair, DNI, Egypt, energy resources, European Parliament, European Union, Eurozone, EYP (Greece), financial warfare, France, Germany, Greece, history, Ireland, Joseph Fitsanakis, LGT Group, Liechtenstein, Liechtensteinische Landesbank, Netherlands, Portugal, Robert Zoellick, Spain, Suez Crisis, tax evasion, UK, United States, US Congress, USSR, World Bank

Unprecedented German tax scandal has intelligence connection

January 27, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Heinrich Kieber

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Klaus Zumwinkel was until recently the CEO of Deutsche Post, Germany’s now-privatized postal company, which is said to be the world’s largest logistics corporation. Early yesterday morning, Zumwinkel was given a two-year suspended sentence and fined €1 million for systematically evading taxes “with criminal energy”, as the presiding judge put it. The disgraced former CEO is thus far the highest-profile offender in what has become the largest financial crime scandal in German history. The affair involves nearly 1,000 names of wealthy investors, celebrities, and business executives, linked to illegal fund deposits at LLB and LGT Group, two “no-questions-asked” banks owned by the Royal family of the tiny alpine tax haven of Liechtenstein. What is perhaps less known is that the investigation, which now incorporates thousands of individuals in at least a dozen countries, began through a tip received by Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Read more of this post