Osen LLC - June 6, 2002
MAJOR ARTICLE DISCLOSES GERMAN GOVERNMENT HAS FINANCIAL TIES TO DEFENDANT AND PROPERTIES AND WILL REAP HUGE WINDFALL IF CASE GOES AWAY
New Jersey grandmother Barbara Principe takes on Europe's largest retailer; Bush and Schroeder discuss "legal peace," while Finance Ministry admits contract with KarstadtQuelle, Germany's largest retailer.
New York, NY (June 6, 2002)-- In a blockbuster article in today's Wall Street Journal Europe, it was disclosed that the German government is pressuring the Bush administration to put an end to a New York lawsuit filed by a New Jersey grandmother who is heir to the Wertheim Department Store company--but that the German government stands to reap enormous financial benefits if the case is dismissed.
The New York lawsuit centers on an alleged fraud committed in New York in 1951, in which the former Chairman of the Board of the Wertheim Company convinced two Wertheim heirs to give up their claim for restitution--four days after signing a secret agreement in New York to sell those shares to what is now KarstadtQuelle AG, Europe's largest retailer.
The latest article in The Wall Street Journal reveals the following:
In recent meetings in Washington, German Foreign Ministry argued that the case should be included under the 2000 agreement which settled Nazi-era slave labor claims--despite the fact that the acts in question occurred in 1951 in New York;
Last Month in Berlin, German Chancellor Gerard Schroeder personally raised the issue with President Bush;
If the case goes forward it could embarrass the German government by airing details of a separate dispute in which the government has refused to pay for Wertheim land in Berlin--despite the fact that its own resitution aurthority has ruled that the Wertheim heirs are entitled to compensation;
Even though their own resitution agency ruled against them, the German government development agency is pushing a huge apartment, shopping and office complex on land once owned by the Wertheim department store and family;
In 1995, the German government "quietly" paid KarstadtQuelle an undisclosed sum for the rights to the Wertheim land;
In 1991, the government also allowed KarstadtQuelle to take over another Wertheim property at Potsdamer Platz without going through the procedures set up after the reunification of Germany for the return of East German land. That single property was sold in 2000 for an estimated $150 million.
It is not clear whether the German government has revealed any of its financial ties to the Bush Administration.
Gary Osen, an American attorney representing Barbara Principe in the New York lawsuit, said: "This is an obvious conflict of interest. The German government can't pretend to be acting on broad public policy grounds while it is in business with KarstadtQuelle, and stands to make hundreds of millions at the expense of the Wertheim heirs."
