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Shownotes Transcript
The Bench.
The island of Lanzarote, which extends over an area of 807 square kilometers, is of volcanic origin. This island arose from the ocean some 25 million years ago as a result of the accumulation of material from repeated eruptions. On the afternoon of our last full day on the island, Max, Simone, Helga, and I pile into the rented Peugeot and head out for a drive. At some point, we turn left off the main road.
In the distance, we can see the tall peaks of Fire Mountain, the scene of that six-year erupting volcano. The mountain rises majestically in the middle of a national park. At the park's entrance sits a small sculpture of local artist Cesar Monrique's Devilman, a sort of mascot. He's got a wide-legged stance and a squiggly tail. In most renderings, he holds a trident over his head with both hands, forming a T with his body. His vibe suggests he's either about to dance or attack. ♪
We drive into the park and pull into a parking lot. Tour buses crowd a corner of the lot. Couples pose for selfies in front of what is undeniably a breathtaking panoramic view of the island. Families look around for snacks. The gift shop is packed with Devilmen, his image on hoodies, magnets, keychains, and coasters. Our timing is good. The Devil Mountain staff is about to show a crowd of about 50 tourists a demonstration of a volcanic eruption.
One young guy in the park's khaki uniform pours very hot water into a hole that's about three times the size of a golf cup. It takes a second, and then... Helga wants more of the volcano show, but he'll settle for a ride on the tour bus.
According to legend, Hilario planted a fig tree at this spot, which, although taking root, never bore fruit as the flower could not blossom due to the intense heat of the flames. The bus driver inches along narrow roads with no guardrails, braking occasionally to let us passengers gawk at the craggy sights. I see Mac clutching the headrest of the seat in front of him as we make perilous turns. Can't say I blame him. The mountain reaches about 1,200 feet at its peak.
That's a long way down. If Helga is concerned for his or anyone else's safety, he doesn't show it. In fact, at one point I'm pretty sure I catch him napping. I know I just met the guy, but I have to say, his demeanor is not what I was expecting from an ex-con who lost everything, came crashing back to Earth, and is scraping by on 1200 euros a month. It's hard to imagine him agitated or upset. He seems incredibly calm most of the time. Chill even. Like, life is good.
Is this because he was transformed by his experience? Did getting busted and going to jail make him appreciate his freedom to the point that nothing bothers him now? Or was he always like this? Right now, all I know is that if I had lived through half of what he has, I'm not sure I'd be able to doze off on a crowded tour bus.
But maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. This is, after all, the same guy who told me this is how he felt while perpetrating the crime that led to his downfall. I was more or less feeling like a little boy stealing maybe in a food store some sweets, you know. For me, it was a kind of game. It was not important. Helga's nonchalance here is pretty incredible.
Because the game Helga was playing involved one of the richest men in the world from one of the most powerful families in business. The man Helga was playing with was Berthold Albrecht, an heir to the Aldi supermarket fortune. From Campsite Media, in association with Sony Music Entertainment, I'm Bijan Steven, and this is Chameleon, Gallery of Lies. Episode 2, Collages.
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You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. Even compared to other spotlight-shunning, super-wealthy families, the Albrechts are notoriously reclusive and secretive. And here's what we do know. The family money started to accumulate when a man named Theo Albrecht and his older brother Karl took over their mother's shop in Essen with designs on building a supermarket empire. The brothers were lucky to have the chance. Karl served in the German army in World War II, fighting on the Eastern Front.
Theo, meanwhile, was with a German unit in Africa before being captured by U.S. soldiers. They both made it home after the war. The chain they created was Aldi, a mashup of the words Albrecht and discount. It succeeded in large part due to the family's extreme cost-cutting measures. Aldi stores were whittled down to their bare essentials, stocking far fewer products than other markets. Phone numbers to the stores were unlisted, so employees weren't interrupted by personal calls.
customers bagged their own groceries. Forbes assistant managing editor Kerry Dolan told us about another specific way the company saved a few bucks. In exchange for nothing fancy, you got low prices. So, you know, pulling groceries out of boxes that were on shelves as opposed to taking them out of the boxes and putting them on the shelves, that kind of thing. By translating their low operational overhead to lower food costs for customers, Theo and Carl led the company into a period of massive growth.
Aldi stores began popping up all across Europe and then the U.S. In 1979, the family bought the Trader Joe's chain. "Aldi has a lot to show you for a quarter." Cue the montage of mac and cheese, bread, butter, biscuits, grapes, green beans, and pudding.
And those weren't the only things you could get for a quarter. If you want to get a grocery cart, you have to put like a quarter in to get the cart out and then to get your quarter back, you have to put the cart back in. So it kind of makes the customers do more work than at a typical grocery store where employees would grab the carts and put them back where they belong. So that's kind of a whole philosophy of if you want to pay lower prices, you kind of have to do a little bit more work at the store to get them. You know, you're just a lot less frills than at a typical grocery store.
Aldi, the stock-up store. At the time of Theo's death in 2010, Forbes had him as the 31st richest person in the world, with Carl clocking in at number 10. But all that money couldn't always protect the Albrechts. On his way home from work one night in 1971, Theo was kidnapped by two men, a lawyer deep in gambling debts and an ex-con.
Theo was held prisoner in the lawyer's office in Dusseldorf for 17 days before negotiating down the ransom amount to 7 million Deutschmarks, or about $2 million. He was released by his captors after an Essen bishop brought the kidnappers the cash. The men were eventually caught and given eight-year prison sentences. Theo convinced the German government to let him claim the ransom money as a tax-deductible business cost.
So perhaps it makes sense that after giving up daily control of his portion of Aldi in the early 1990s, Theo went into seclusion. Forbes, known for publishing a yearly list of billionaires, once described him as, quote, more reclusive than the Yeti. For decades, Theo did anything he could to avoid the press, the public, and anyone with a camera.
Helge Achenbach was aware of the Albrecht mythology when, one evening in 2007, he says he was invited to a Bavarian pub-style dinner at the Essen home of an acquaintance. That night, Helge tells us, he was focused less on the food and much more on the fact that Theo Albrecht's son Berthold would also be attending the dinner with his wife Babette. They cooked some very nice food, but the food was not important for me. More important was, of course, to meet this...
Helge says it was a nice evening. He and Dorothy got on well with Bertholdt and Ebbett. They talked about life, work, and Helge's personal art collection. That night, Helge says he has no intention of seeking business with Bertholdt. And the Aldi heir seemed to have no interest in acquiring art.
The tax advisor mutual friend called Helga the next day. He said, by the way, they were very happy with you, but he said to me, I never will buy art from Achenbach. That means that he was not interested in art. And I said, sure, I don't like to sell the art to him. So I was cool, you know, it's okay. Helga says that it wasn't until about a year after that first dinner that he saw Berthold again.
He tells us he had an opening for one of his Rheingold exhibitions and invited Berthold and Babette. To his surprise, the attention-averse couple showed up. At one point, Helge says, Berthold went outside for a smoke and asked Helge to join him. The two men talked.
The world was still reeling from the global banking collapse. Helge says that Berthold told him he had lost faith in banks and he was looking for new places to put his money. And soon, as luck would have it, Berthold was due for a windfall. And he said, you know what, we have now May. In November, I will receive 60 million. And I thought, maybe this time I would like to invest this money in your art.
Because I don't trust the banks anymore. Bryn Haddon, a professor in global contemporary art at Colgate University, supported Helga's account. The Albrechts were investing in art not necessarily because they were art lovers or were part of
the scene of art collecting. Purportedly, they started to collect art because Mr. Albrecht was frustrated with just the interest rates at banks at the time. And this was also during a moment in the art market when it was seeing a kind of unprecedented boom and art was looking like
a very good investment. Art is a commodity that doesn't play by the same rules and it also pretty much never depreciates. So the Albrechts were making at the time what they just believed to be a pretty conservative investment in the new market.
When Berthold's $60 million came in, Helge says he deployed his full-on charm offensive. Following a Helge Grie's sale of Andreas Gursky photos to Volkswagen, he remembers that there was a celebratory dinner. Helge says he invited the Albrechts. There was a huge dinner with
Gerhard Schröder and the Chancellor and, or ex-Chancellor, the ex-President, Mr. Wolf, and a number of the stars, you know, actors and so on. So in a way this fascinated the Albrechts family. More the woman, but also him, in a way also him. Because they never went out. Helge was pleased that Berthold had entered his world.
Especially given his father's aversion to socializing following the kidnapping. It was a terrible thing. And so the family since this time was more discreet and more in the back without, you know, having connections to people. And so with me, he opened the first time and he came in life back a little bit. And I think he liked it and he liked me. We were sympathetic. We were no friends in those days, but...
Around this time, Helge says that he and Berthold began talking about what kind of collection the advisor would help build for the family. And given the large amount of cash on hand, 60 million euros, Helge was feeling ambitious as always. He believed that the Albrechts would soon be in possession of such a spectacular collection that it could be kept in Museum Folkvang, the top contemporary art museum in Essen.
He thought the family should have its own wing there, and that half the Albrecht collection could live in this wing. Helge says that the museum's director at the time, Hartwig Fischer, loved this idea. So Helge printed up a catalog with the works he anticipated buying for Berthold: pieces by Warhol and Picasso, and towering German artists like Max Beckmann, and as always, Gerhard Richter. With a catalog under his arm, Helge says that he visited Berthold and Babette at their home for the first time to present his idea.
The house was huge, cold, and tacky. Was there any art? Yeah, there was cheap art, nothing important. And it was very tacky, very old-fashioned. And I think the father was furnishing it, not them. So it was a kind of very old-fashioned style. Uninspired setting aside, Helga was excited to present his idea. He says he showed the Albrechts the catalog and talked them through his plan.
When he finished his presentation, he sat back, waited for their response. For a moment, the room was still. And Bertolt was very quiet sitting, and his wife started to open the discussion. She was almost hysteric and said, No way. I don't like to buy for public. I don't like to buy for museum. We only buy paintings for us.
And this selfish communication style made me really sad and I was disappointed. Babette's lawyer, Dr. Andreas Orban, rejected this and other claims Helge made about Berthold and Babette. Helge's Volkwang contact, Hartwig Fischer, is now the director of the British Museum in London. We contacted the British Museum in an effort to reach Fischer, but were told it wasn't possible to speak with him.
A Museum Falkvang press officer emailed to say, quote, I have addressed different circles of people who were here in the house around 2010 and are still connected with the house today. However, no one in the circle of people could remember such plans. Therefore, I cannot confirm this from our side. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
Welcome to another round of Drawing Board or Miro Board. Today, we talk brainstorms with UX designer Brian. Let's go. First question. You thought you'd see everyone's idea in the team brainstorm, but you've got a grand total of one. Drawing Board or Miro Board? Drawing Board. In Miro, the team can add ideas now or later. And with privacy mode, we can keep them anonymous until they're good to share. Correct.
And
And he's wild. For a limited time, visit miro.com slash brainstorm now and get a free business plan trial to unlock even more brainstorming tools like private mode and voting. That's miro.com slash brainstorm now.
If somebody says the right words, promises the right things, anybody can become a victim. Since the early 2000s, millions of handwritten letters were landing at people's doors all across America. She truly believed that this was going to save her mind from going further astray.
into the depths of dementia. I'm investigative journalist Rachel Brown, and I'm going to tell you the story of a scam unlike anything I've ever seen and the shape-shifting mastermind who evaded capture for more than 20 years. We never in our wildest dreams thought that these schemes were at this scale. They'd been without water for two months. All they wanted in return was whatever it was that Maria Duval was promising them.
From ITN Productions and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to The Greatest Scam Ever Written. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media.
When it came time for Helga to negotiate his fees for his work with Berthold, he says he told Berthold that he normally charges 10 to 20 percent of the cost of the art, depending on how much work is involved with the researching, identifying, and acquiring of pieces. Helga says that these numbers did not sit well with his new client. And he looked at me like shocked. He said, what? So much money.
"No, you know, we let our corporations which work with us, they make 5% profit on us, but that's the most we give as Aldi. So I cannot give you more than 5%." I said, "Hopla, what is going on here now?" And I felt really a little stupid. And I said, "Werthold, this is less money if I have a lot of costs. It's very less."
He said, "Yes, but you know, it's a big sum, 60 million and maybe more coming up." If the Essen Museum fiasco hurt Helge, this lower fee battered his ego, his sense of what is right and fair. It didn't help that Helge believed Berthold was thinking in terms of how his family runs their supermarket empire, a famously no-frills operation. Nonetheless, Helge tells us, he agreed to the terms and went to work.
The first painting he says Berthold wanted was called Tower Bridge, a 1925 work by the Austrian modernist Oskar Kokoschka. It's a lovely, if not especially dynamic, painting of, that's right, London's Tower Bridge.
Helge remembered tracking it down in the London gallery of one of his contacts. And he says he managed to get a good price on the piece. According to Helge, the gallerist knocked the cost down for him from 1.3 million euros to 800,000. I said, OK, cool, that's nice. So I took the photo from this painting and I was very happy. And next day I fly home to Dusseldorf. And I think that was Thursdays.
And I said, Bertolt, I'm coming on Saturday to visit you because he said I have only time on Saturday. We were not able to independently confirm Helge's buying of Kokoschka's painting for Berthold. We found the piece currently in the Minneapolis Institute of Art's collection, but Helge says there may have been more than one of the works created, and he's not sure if that's the one he bought for Berthold. In any case, Helge says that Berthold liked the painting very much, and for him, the price was fine.
Helga says he told Bertholdt he would see if he could indeed buy Tower Bridge for 800,000. But when Helga calculated his 5%, he simply couldn't live with that amount for his work, 40,000 euros.
So he asked one of his company's employees to reconstruct the invoice from the gallery to show that the picture would actually cost $950,000. Still a bargain in Helga's mind. But, Helga tells us, the employee was not having it. And he looked at me like if he would see the devil, the devil on the ground. And I said, OK, I will do it. I showed him with a copy of a
There was no price anymore in this commission paper. I said, yeah, we can fill it in and when we get the bill, we can change it. So he started to fake these invoices and he made such a big money for this.
German standards, you know, also with his 5% deal, he already made huge sums of money, but that wasn't enough for him. This is Tobias Thimm, co-author of the book Art and Crime. He didn't want to drive one Bentley. He wanted to drive five Bentleys, or he didn't want to travel first class cars.
He wanted to travel with private jets. And that was the league he wanted to play in. And you can't make that money in the art market if you're playing fair. You have to play foul to make this kind of money in the art market. From his first transaction with Berthold, Helge was willing to play foul to make more money.
And he wasn't terribly creative with his fraud. All he really needed was some whiteout and a few computer keystrokes. So we put white over the well and we made a copy and then we printed it in the computer, the figures. It was a little bit, you know, if you would control it, you would see, okay, the numbers are a little bit more to the left or to the right. But it was like, you know, like idiot work.
It was primitiv, you know, like a collage. A collage. That's the word Helge used to describe his fraudulent invoices. A term of art. When he calls the forged invoices collages, he tries to play himself into the role of the artist. And that's also kind of...
strange or it's not fair because it wasn't an artwork. It was just a crime, these invoices. They weren't collages. They were fakes. Having slipped one fake invoice past Berthold, Helga then embarked on a buying spree of some of the biggest names in the industry. Colgate's Bryn Hatton says most private collections remain that way. Private. And
For the most part, the Albrecht collection is not well known publicly. Like many private collections, it's not one that has full transparent information available about it. Only something like 10 or 12% of private collections do make all of that information known publicly. This is one of those collections like that where there's no kind of comprehensive publicly available inventory about what's in there.
But we do know that the collection is big on some pretty blue-chip names, especially in the German and American contemporary art scene of the time. So yeah, the collection includes Gerhard Richter,
and Jorg Immendorf, photographers Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth. And there's also some pretty heavy hitter, like, you know, well-known European modernists like Picasso and Francis Picabia, Yves Klein, and some Americans, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. We know are in the collection as well. If you're noticing something about all these artists, you aren't alone.
All of these names, besides kind of a general description of like westernness and maleness, not a lot of women, not a lot of non-Europeans or non-Americans, are an emphasis on scale and spectacle. So all the artists that I've listed there work on large scale a lot of the time. As Helga built the Albrecht collection, he says that he and Berthold became closer. They traveled to exhibitions and shows, including to Art Basel.
Helga tells us that he rented planes through his NetJet account while Berthold picked up the room costs. They bonded over their shared love of classic cars, Helga says, and opened up about their lives and their work. Yeah, and we learned from each other, and it was very nice. What did you learn from him? Yeah, to be, let's say, careful with...
Somebody who does not know something about art. Don't be too arrogant. Be nice to him and explain him something. And
He tried to explain to me how the world of Aldi works and what is the secret of Aldi and so on. And we were talking like men, you know, very nicely. In one of his two memoirs, Helge writes that Berthold and Babette soon became regulars for Saturday lunch at his restaurant Monkey's West. That man from the end of the last episode, eating Wienerschnitzel and drinking white wine, that was Berthold.
The two men got on so well that Helge says he even advised Berthold and Babette on where to put their new pieces in their villa. Helge recalls one Breitrichter abstract painting titled "Maria" went in a corridor. Another was hung in the guesthouse. And in a curious touch, Helge says that Berthold decided to hang a striking and haunting image by fashion photographer and Dadaist Erwin Blumenfeld near the entrance to Berthold's bedroom. It's called Hitlerfresse, and it depicts Hitler as a rotting skeleton.
Blumenfeld made the work in 1933 by superimposing a skull over Hitler's face. A swastika sits on the forehead. American soldiers later used the image as propaganda, covering German cities with it. In his second memoir, Helge wrote about the bedroom entrance placement, saying that Berthold thought the Blumenfeld photo, quote, came into effect well there. Helge was not able to show us an invoice for this transaction or confirmation of the place in the Albrecht home where the piece was hung,
But, as far as we know, the account in his book has never been disputed. Even as these pieces were going up, however, Helga's deception was taking a toll on him. He tried to rationalize the forged invoices by reminding himself that Berthold's collection was already appreciating greatly, as art always had for him. I sell only the best paintings and they will go up and they went up.
Andy Warhol in my first days, $300,000, now $30 million. So what the hell is coming up? And besides, he says, he offered Berthold a buyback deal. If Berthold wanted to sell a piece back to Helga, he would get 4% on top of what he paid for every year that had passed since the acquisition. So, for example, if Berthold sold the work back to Helga after three years, he'd get a 12% return.
But, of course, there was no record of this clause. Helga says that he and Berthold did not execute a contract outlining the terms of their deals. Something that's not at all uncommon in the art world, which still functions largely on handshakes and winks.
Helge says this way of operating encourages deception and fraud. Though, others point out, not everyone working in the market becomes a thief. The art market is so unregulated that you can easily manipulate it. That's Tobias Timm again. You can easily make off some extra money by hiding some information or deceiving people like Helge did.
But it is also an excuse of Helge to say the whole art market is deceptive and is fake. Helge says he was driven less by the promise of riches and more by an unbridled ego. It was because my character as a narcissistic person also likes this situation that I'm helpful.
And with this stupid deal, I ruined my completely life until this point. You are working and working and want to be a good guy, want to be successful. And then with this stupid thing, you kill yourself.
Helga's attempts at self-assurance, the appreciating artworks, the buyback clause, did little to tamp down the mounting guilt he felt. There was a time when we got our friendship stage. I was thinking, OK, I have to stop this. I cannot do it anymore. But I was in this deep situation already. So it was a conflict for me and I felt very, very bad.
And I started feeling, was ashamed also. Helge says there were times when he was close to telling Bertolt everything. He was telling me private things and about his father and his life and so on.
And that made it very complicated for me and I had to stop this cheating. So I was in this moment and there were a few situations where I could have taken the chance, but I didn't take the chance to speak with him. I wanted to explain to him, "Beato, we have to forget this 5%." Honestly, I never took them. I took more. I wanted to tell him, but I was not brave enough.
to tell him. But I started stopping it. Helge says that for the last several purchases he made for Berthold, he did not manipulate invoices. There were no collages. It was totally above board. He tells us that his new, transparent way of working together began with the purchase of a sculpture by the top-selling English contemporary artist Tony Craig. For that deal, Helge says he was finally able to be honest with his client.
He says that Berthold understood how, because Helge had a relationship with Krag, he was able to get a better price on the work. One day, Helge remembers, he drove Berthold and Bebet outside of Dusseldorf, where Krag was living and working. And he had a beautiful sculpture, five meter high, standing in his park. And I said to Bertolt, Bertolt, this is exactly the sculpture we need for your park. And he said, yeah, nice, very nice.
and said we should speak with Tony about it. So Tony said, "Yeah, Helge, in the gallery it costs 850 and for you both it's 450." In the car on the way home, Helge says the two men, for the first time, spoke honestly about what a fair transaction would look like. I drove him to his house, to Essen, and his wife was with us. We said, "Okay, how are we going to deal here?"
And I said Bertolt, honestly, 450,000 and you know it's 400,000 more in the market and 5% are 22,500. You understand that it's too less. And he said to me, what do you want? What do you want to earn? I said, I leave it with you. And he said, put 100,000 on top.
So I buy it for 550. And I sent him a bill over 550 without the 5% because we had a deal. So I sent it to him and he paid. And so that was the first clean deal.
More clean deals followed, until Berthold's 60 million euro art fund was exhausted. At which point, Helga says, Berthold turned his attention to collecting classic cars. A 1938 Krupp Mercedes. Two Ferraris that Helga says cost Berthold about 20 million euros. Helga says he hooked Berthold up with his car guy, Daimler-Benz, who then oversaw the buying of vintage automobiles for Berthold. This new, more honest phase in his relationship with Berthold felt less fraught to Helga.
But then, everything changed again. You're listening to Chameleon from Campside Media. The following interview is being videotaped at the Dade County Public Safety Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida. And sir, would you identify yourself? My name is Ronald F. Carver III. In 1976, a man in Florida tells a cop he has a confession to make. Arriving in Miami, I proceeded to do certain things that
But instead of becoming his victim, I became his confidant, one of the people closest to him, as he recounted and was tried for his horrific crimes.
From Orbit Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to My Friend the Serial Killer. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Camellia from Campside Media. In late 2011, just four years after Helga met Berthold at the dinner in the house made to look like a Bavarian pub, Helga says that Berthold's health took a bad turn.
According to Helga and to multiple published accounts, Berthold's liver was giving out. Helga says Berthold recovered in a hospital and then was moved to the sprawling Grand Resort Bad Ragaz in Switzerland in order to quit booze and get healthy. Helga says he rented a plane through NetJet and flew with Berthold and Babette to Switzerland. Helga tells us that Berthold spent the next several months in the resort's sanitarium.
According to the website The Leading Hotels of the World, the Grand Resort is, quote, a retreat for tranquility and relaxation. Nestled amidst the foothills of the Alps in eastern Switzerland, an hour's drive from Zurich. Here, guests will find the space to breathe. An alpine setting specially created for healing, preventive medicine, and self-discovery. Mac and I recently emailed the Grand Resort to find out how much a night in the Royal Suite currently goes for.
We were told it would be 10,800 Swiss francs per night or nearly 12,000 American dollars. We don't know if Berthold rented the Royal Suite, but we do know that all those rooms in the shadows of the Alps don't come cheap. The luxury accommodations did little to slow Berthold's demise. Several months after Berthold moved into the resort, Helge says, he received a phone call. It was a Saturday morning.
Five o'clock, my mobile phone rings. And on the phone I have Bertolt. And he says, Helge, Helge, you must help me. I said, Bertolt, what's going on? They put me in a cellar. I can't go out. They really want not that I go out anymore. Please, can you help me? Can you come? I said, Bertolt. And he was starting to cry. He was crying.
I said, Bertolt, what is this? Then I said, OK, I arranged something. I let you know. Helge says he called a nurse at the resort who assured him that Bertolt was not in the cellar but was safely in his room. She told Helge that such dark hallucinations are common when the liver stops functioning properly. Panicked by his call with Bertolt, Helge tells us he then spoke by phone with his own doctor, a man Helge says Bertolt had been seeing as well.
Helga says his doctor thought the situation sounded dire and began making plans to take Berthold by plane or helicopter to a nearby hospital with specialists who could help him. Babette's lawyer, Andreas Urban, disputed Helga's account and found it laughable that someone as wealthy and powerful as Berthold would need the art dealer's help with his health care. In any case, Helga says Berthold never made it to a nearby hospital. Two days later, he was dead.
A few years after Berthold's death, Babette and the five children they had together brought a suit against Babette's brother-in-law, Theo Albrecht Jr. They claimed that Berthold was not in his right mind when he filed paperwork in December of 2010 to limit the control Babette and the kids had over family foundations and the company. According to multiple published accounts, in a court document, Babette wrote that her husband's cause of death was, quote, organ failure brought on by alcoholism.
And, according to a Daily Mail article, she wrote that at the time Berthold made the decision to limit his wife and children's control of the foundations, quote, he could hardly sleep because of his illness. He took high dosages of alcohol and sedatives to try to go to sleep. For Helga, Berthold's death brought trouble of a different sort. Because by then, Helga says he was something like a friend, an ally, a confidant.
The two men had done business together with handshake deals and mutual trust. But with Berthold gone, there was now room for doubt to creep in. Doubt about the nature of their dealings. Doubt that the trust between the men was well-earned. We came out of the plane and there were two tall guys, very sympathetic, good-looking guys.
He's very sporty, looking at me, he said, are you Mr. Ahamba? I said, yes, I'm Mr. Ahamba. Ah, Mr. Ahamba, would you come and come to the side? We have something for you. And I said, what do you have? Yeah, we have here, I don't know the word in English, but we have a paper that means you are arrested.
On the next episode of Chameleon. And she was shocked. Helge's luck runs out. She said, what happened? I said, yeah, something stupid. They think I took too much money from Berthold. You have panic and you think it's not possible. And his fall captivates the country. Every day the trial happened, there was a new constellation, a new kind of picture of Helge's life and history.
how he acted in the art market. A young, tough prosecutor takes up the case. Throughout the prosecution, I just saw him as a suspect. He was someone who took advantage of a good opportunity for him to make money. Putting Helge in an unfamiliar position. It was a stupid game. It was a fucking game. It was a terrible game. I hate it. That's next time on Chameleon, Gallery of Lies.
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Gallery of Lies is hosted by me, Bijan Steven. It's reported by me, Henry Lavoie, and Mac Montandon, and produced by me and Henry Lavoie. Mac Montandon is our executive producer. This episode was written by Mac Montandon. Our story editors are Emily Martinez and Matt Scher. Original music, sound design, and mixing by Garrett Tiedemann.
Recording by Iwin Lai-Tramuen. Our theme song is Wonder Bar by Dina Summer, Kalipo, and Local Suicide. Our fact-checking is by Mary Mathis. Translating and interpreting by Mino Mushtagi. Archival research by Vanessa Christophers Trinks. And additional field production by Jonas Voigt. A special thanks to Emma Simonoff, Valentina Delicia, and our operations team. Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, and Destiny Dingle.
Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriotis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scherer. If you enjoyed Chameleon, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.