by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
Print, television and online media were having a field day in October with news that the Glock family was involved in a lawsuit filed in the US that might be worth half a billion dollars.
TheDailyBeast.com opened their story thus:
“King Lear, strippers, and show horses: Inside the $500 million lawsuit that could bring down Gaston Glock’s gun empire. Guns, money, sex, and betrayal: Rarely do the news gods smile down on us with such charity.”
ABCNews, Businessweek and other establishment media were less lurid in their reports, but they had a real soap opera to deal with.
As this issue of TGM went to press, no one had any comments from officials of Glock in Smyrna, GA.
Helga Glock, 78, the ex-wife and reported one-time business partner of Gaston Glock, 84, had filed a $500 million suit against her former husband in federal court in Atlanta, GA, claiming that he cheated her out of decades of profits generated by the popular pistol that bears his name. They were divorced after some 50 years of marriage in 2011. Gaston and has since married a woman a half-century his junior.
At one time, Helga Glock held a 15% interest in Glock’s Austrian company, which held 100% of the shares of Glock’s Georgia operation, the suit said. She reportedly now holds just 1% of the company shares.
Helga’s 358-page complaint invokes the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and seeks $500 million plus unspecified punitive damages and attorneys’ fees. It accuses Gaston of converting company operations to a “multiple-decade, virtually worldwide” criminal enterprise that channeled funds to his personal coffers through activities that included wire fraud, mail fraud, theft and the transportation and receipt of stolen goods.
The suit also alleges that Gaston arranged for and accepted improper royalty payments for use of the Glock name as a trademark and logo—which she claims he never owned—and secured other funds “laundered through fraudulent billing companies” and via “sham lease and loan agreements.”
The suit also names as defendants multiple Glock companies around the world. They include Glock Inc., the Smyrna-based headquarters for Glock’s North American operations; Consultinvest, a Georgia company affiliated with the Smyrna manufacturing facility; and Glock Ges.m.b.H., the parent company in Austria.
The suit also names as defendants three of Gaston Glock’s former corporate lieutenants.
Gaston, according to the suit, is reportedly one of the 20 wealthiest individuals in Austria, with an esti-mated net worth about 1.4 billion euros.
Helga Glock’s attorney, John Da Grosa Smith of Atlanta’s Smith & Horvath, said the lengthy complaint is rooted in “a business dispute.”
