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September 20, 2012. A cool day, partly cloudy. Sometimes you want to return the wheel of time. Cancel decisions, give events a different direction. For Urs Schwarzenbach (69), art lover, multimillionaire and owner of the hotel Dolder Grand on the Zürichberg, September 20, 2012 could have been such a day.
He steals the private jet in his plane this morning Zurich Airport and decides to enter through the Execujet terminal building – there can only be private planes, if they have not nothing to declare.
This moment is changing his world. Always. Schwarzenbach is always a megastar, a top-flyer. The "balance sheet" estimates its assets at one and a half billion francs. The large number of silver, villas and palaces around the world, the land – all this makes a great impression. The career of the banking apprentice at the currency tycoon is impressive. He accumulated in his own words in the 80s with foreign currency speculation in England a billion assets.
Photo Gallery – The Dolder Empire
In Zurich, the city's superiors admire him because the billionaire bought and beautifully rebuilt the Grand Dolder Hotel. Luxury radiates throughout the city. The elite of St. Moritz, where he owns several properties, is still courting him. The entry ticket to London's high society at the Engadin is his world-class art collection.
A third of billions, blocked
But since this day of September, there is more stone in his empire. Slowly, it begins to crumble. Ten, twelve customs investigators, most of them in jeans and T-shirts, will soon search his five-star hotel twice, and hang valuable pictures under the stunned eyes of the guests; they will upset their villas, their offices, their galleries of friends. Confiscate stacks of documents, copy hard drives. He will receive letters from the General Directorate of Customs and the Swiss Federal Tax Administration: 220 million Swiss francs blocked by the Treasury, 150 million dollars confiscated by customs, 22 million taxes at the end of the year. import, 11 million francs. That's more than a third of a billion francs of assets that it will not have anymore.
Video: Raid in the Dolder
As a result, thirty or so works of art were confiscated on March 7, 2017 at the luxury hotel Dolder in Zurich. Video: Stefan Hohler and Lea Blum, artwork: Robert Indiana
This September morning at Zurich's private aerodrome, nothing is usual: up to now, Schwarzenbach has not almost never met customs officers, controls are rare. But on September 20, they are there. He pushes "An Ancient Custom" from Edwin Long – 75 centimeters to 95 centimeters, worth: 302,400 francs – through the airport building – unpaid duty. Then they appear suddenly.
Everything could have gone well. The usual stop: fill out forms, accept a penalty, pay taxes. Case done. At the General Directorate of Customs in Bern, such decisions are overwhelmed – against antique dealers who sell expensive furniture at lower prices, or even owners of horses who declare noble mares as old horses
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But this time, things are different. Maybe it's his nonchalance on this day that is prompting customs investigators. He says he used the green passage because the customs procedure is too tedious, "it takes two hours." Bureaucratic stuff is not for him. For Edwin Long, he should have paid 8 percent tax on the import – 24,000 francs. Schwarzenbach is not a blank sheet for customs officers. He had already been involved in customs procedures.
The investigators are suspicious. In a customs warehouse opened in Schlieren, where Schwarzenbach ends his art, they take stock of the weeks following the incident in September and control the so-called escorts. These are issued when you bring goods abroad. They realize: only a little bit agrees. Almost systematically, the images are not where they should be according to the newspapers
16 raids
The Zurich investigation group of the General Directorate of Customs then undertakes a major action against the billionaire. Spread over the next few years, there are 16 raids. Gigabytes of data and 1.8 million documents are confiscated. Although Schwarzenbach's lawyers are fighting in court to seal the confiscated material, they lose. Customs investigators share the mine of data with the tax administration – which leads to the blockade of assets and Treasury claims.
Investigators disassemble the material in pieces and reassemble it. They meet what they believe to be a sophisticated system with which the financier should have avoided millions of francs in import taxes on his works from 2007 to 2013. He started in 2007. At the. era, there were many artistic treasures in the Schwarzenbach region rented open the customs warehouse. It is an extraterritorial zone, the goods are not cleared. Until 2007, this storage was virtually unlimited in time, but the Federal Council has changed the rules. Because it offered an easy way to get rid of his treasures tax-free. Since then, the goods were released after six months
which, according to the customs authority, put Schwarzenbach under pressure. He then had two legal options: either he brings the images abroad (and pays the tax on the import), or he officially introduces them from the customs warehouse in Switzerland – and pays 8% VAT in the coffers of the Swiss state. For all the works that would have totaled about 22 million francs
Photo gallery: The customs department intervenes in the Dolder
The General Directorate of Customs accuses it of having took a third illegal route: he exported part of the photos officially abroad and then shortly thereafter, with his jet again secretly (that is to say unpaid) to return Switzerland – as he had tried this September morning in Zurich. For this, he was sentenced by the district court Bülach in the spring to a fine of 4 million francs. He filed a complaint about it.
For particularly voluminous paintings, Schwarzenbach chose another way according to the customs authorities – and that is what makes the last decision. He first exported the works of art, then brought them back to the country via the famous Gmurzynska Gallery on Paradeplatz in Zurich. Galleries enjoy customs privileges, they can import images free of duty if they are for sale. However, in the documents seized, the customs investigators could find no sales effort on the part of the gallery. The General Directorate of Customs now confiscates the art collector with 7 million Swiss francs because he abused the privilege of the gallery "systematically" for his private purposes for 88 paintings, is in the decision of last Monday. Schwarzenbach's fault was "very serious". The decision is not final.
The art collector denies the allegations. He is of the opinion that the customs authority is not competent in this case. "Urs Schwarzenbach took note of the decision of the General Directorate of Customs and will continue," says his spokesman
After the import-export maneuvers, he hung the photos on the walls of his private homes , his family office in Villa Falkenstein in Zurich. and the Hotel Dolder – or the house of a close friend in England.
The Brit is in good company in London and has long been the right hand of Haji Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei. His Majesty is one of the richest in the world. On occasion, he earned $ 20 million a day in the natural gas and oil sector, more than $ 7 billion a year. Of this amount, 4 billion will go into the family fund each year, as reported by Der Spiegel. He resides in a 1788-room palace and owns 7,000 luxury cars, including 604 Rolls-Royce and 452 Ferrari
Secret Owners
Perhaps the sultan's money is there also in Swiss artistic treasures? Schwarzenbach and his British friend himself fuel speculation about a secret donor. They bring a mysterious stranger into the conflict.
Most images were purchased by seven offshore companies – including the Minerva Gallery in Liberia. Although Schwarzenbach on behalf of the gallery gives the instructions, and his header is stored in the computers of his art department in Zurich. Nevertheless, he says that the pictures are not his, the owner is a secret.
The ex-British advisor to the Sultan also has unpolluted images on his walls that do not belong to him. The image of the Pablo Picasso spider, valued at 7.8 million francs, was discovered by customs investigators during a raid on his apartment of the Chesa Futura in St. Moritz. A Marc Chagall is also hanging on it
Question to him in the interrogation: What can you tell us about the paintings?
Answer: Nothing.
Question: You are in your apartment.
Answer: Yes "They are in my apartment, but they do not belong to me."
Question: Who owns the paintings?
Answer: I do not know.
The owners of the offshore companies could not find the customs authorities. It remains difficult to know who really owns the million dollars.
In St. Moritz Schwarzenbach appears today less often. His brocade painting, some went to the luxury seaside resort at a distance you can hear there. At least since the beautiful day of September 2012, the meteoric rise is over. The glories of high flight.
(Tages-Anzeiger)
Created: 07.07.2018, 07:38
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