For years, Lars Windhorst has been persistently fighting to shed his old image of the shady financial juggler. He not only wants to be successful as a serious investor, but also wants to gain public recognition. Windhorst packaging artist Christo bought 380 objects with which Christo had wrapped the Reichstag in 1995 and, as a patron, left them to the Bundestag on permanent loan.
Most recently, he saved the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft from sinking and steered the shipyard into calmer waters. His entry at Hertha BSC also seemed to fuel the image of the new Windhorst: Here someone comes and invests 374 million euros in the capital club. Of course, in the hope of a return at some point; but also with the style that makes Hertha attractive, successful and a top address in European football. What should the fans and Berliners have against it?
Now a bizarre slouch hat affair is thwarting all these efforts. Windhorst is said to have hired a former secret service agent who set up his own snooping agency to orchestrate a nasty campaign against former Hertha president and Windhorst opponent Werner Gegenbauer.
Documents submitted to the court in Tel Aviv convey this impression. Such secret service methods would be unprecedented in the Bundesliga. And they raise the question of whether character assassination campaigns are normal in certain parts of the football-free economy. Let’s put it this way: dirty ambushes happen in parts of business and among some actors more often than many realize. However, she never and nowhere justifies this.
The documents filed with the court in Tel Aviv make sense, but are they real? Who is spreading fake news here?
What makes the Windhorst/Hertha/Shibumi case so puzzling: Why should Windhorst have paid millions to an Israeli agency to discredit the already controversial and ailing Werner Gegenbauer as club president? Or, looked at the other way around: why should the Israelis run such a campaign on their own and without a commission, address opinion leaders from the Hertha environment and even ex-Federal Minister Jürgen Trittin if there was no commission for it? The documents filed with the court in Tel Aviv make sense, but are they real? Or fake, as Windhorst suggests with his previous reactions? Who is it that is spreading fake news here? And why? With what goal?
Clarification is urgently needed, preferably by a neutral authority that is not suspected of exerting any influence. Lars Windhorst will not be able to resolve the allegations with his usual perseverance and skill in placating even business partners who are hostile to him and winning them back over to his side. He has to clarify things quickly and thoroughly because he bears the greatest risk.
374 million euros commitment or not: At Hertha he will never set foot on the ground again if he cannot clear up all allegations beyond a doubt. For him, it is much more dangerous that his reputation as an investor and businessman would finally be destroyed if the descriptions in the documents from Tel Aviv were to come true and his version of “blatant nonsense” turned out to be a lie. After all, who wants to do business with someone who rouses intelligence professionals when they have problems with someone?
