Explosive Whistleblower Report: The Case Herbert Heinz Horst Leiduck & The Mercedes-Benz Misdeeds
NEW YORK (VoiceOfAmericaNews.com) — Next time someone tells you that Mercedes-Benz is great — hand them the Rich TVX News Network bulletins about the executive hubris of the Daimler AG. Skeptics are retarded, misguided, or crazy – Heretics be damned. This is the only reaction of the arrogant management of the Mercedes-Benz Group. A psychological explanation is that over-the-top rewarding reflects a personality disorder: narcissism, symptoms of which include hubris, grandiosity, and enormous self-assurance. Many times, predatory cultures are born of the tremendous success of once high-performing, innovative cultures. The Daimler AG scandal has been in the news for several weeks now. Still, Mercedes-Benz executives came to expect to be trusted as mythical figures built up by German publicity machines. The problem with all this press coverage is that invariably the people in Mercedes-Benz, especially those singled out as celebrities, come to believe their own myths. Being home to the modern car, the German automobile industry is regarded as the most competitive and innovative in the world, but the Daimler AG scandal reveals how much the German automobile industry entities can abuse the public trust. The disclosure, sent to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), paints a picture of a brutal and reckless Daimler management. When the employees of a company like the Mercedes-Benz Group feel that they have license to engage in unethical and illegal conduct, the business is doomed. We are at the beginning to see former Daimler AG CEOs held accountable for their conduct. It is even more important that corporate boards of the Mercedes-Benz Group should be held accountable. None of the Daimler directors was convicted of anything so far.
MERCEDES-BENZ FACES INCREASING PRESSURE IN WASHINGTON
The Rich TVX News Network has reached out to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for comment. A person familiar with the Daimler AG scandal confirmed that the whistleblower has not agreed to be publicly identified, even though the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 strengthened protections for whistleblowers. What we know so far for certain is that the German businessman Herbert Heinz Horst Leiduck was spending four years in prison even though he was innocent. According to the disclosure, Herbert Heinz Horst Leiduck was imprisoned because a large German corporation perverted the course of justice by corrupt means, and despite being a wealthy man, Herbert Heinz Horst Leiduck lost everything he had and he died in abject poverty. A whole family was destroyed by these events, according to the leaked SEC documents filed by the Daimler AG whistleblower against Daimler AG, (which changed its name to Mercedes-Benz Group AG this year). Accordingly, the Whistleblower submitted the whistleblower petition to alert the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or the “Commission”) to, inter alia, Daimler’s violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, et seq. (“FCPA”), which are all the more egregious given its previous settlement with both the Commission and the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) in 2010 in which Daimler and several of its subsidiaries admitted significant FCPA violations resulting from multiple instances of bribery.
Mercedes-Benz & Its Evil Twin, Daimler Trucks
According to the SEC complaint “Facts Pertaining To The Alleged Violations” of the Daimler AG whistleblower, Daimler AG (“Daimler”), at least twice to the best of the Whistleblower’s knowledge, bribed government officials in Russia and in Monaco to gain an advantage in litigation in Hong Kong against an individual, Mr. Herbert Heinz Horst Leiduck, and his company, Intercontinental Resources Company (“IRC”), in obtaining an injunction against them and trying to prevent them from obtaining damages arising from the improperly obtained injunction. The scathing disclosure, in effect Daimler has perverted the course of justice by corrupt means. Most recently, in 2018, Daimler, through an intermediary with a history of forgery, obtained, through bribery, false documents from Russian tax authorities in an effort to disprove the damages theory of opposing parties in the litigation in Hong Kong. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission told the Rich TVX News Network that the Daimler AG whistleblower filed his disclosure to the SEC to help the agency enforce the laws. Mercedes-Benz, and its evil twin, Daimler Trucks, are both brutal examples, both are on the Yale list of companies staying in Russia. Well, it’s all about how you listen to your moral compass. Daimler Trucks is a whole other story. Ironically, the 2018 bribery followed Daimler’s earlier bribe of an investigating magistrate in Monaco in 1994 to provide information that Daimler could use to obtain an injunction against IRC in the same litigation in Hong Kong, which bribery ultimately caused the damages at issue.
HOLDING MERCEDES-BENZ ACCOUNTABLE
No wonder, Mercedes-Benz faces increasing pressure in Washington, with some calling on the United States Department of Justice to launch an investigation. But, the disclosure says, the submission, which spans a long history of litigation in Hong Kong (the “Hong Kong Litigation”), dating back nearly three decades and still ongoing, between Daimler, as plaintiff, on the one hand, and Herbert Heinz Horst Leiduck and IRC, a company he controlled, as defendants, during which litigation Daimler has at least twice bribed government officials to obtain favors and tainted “evidence” favorable to Daimler. According to the SEC file*, these two instances of bribery demonstrate a consistent practice by Daimler of using fraudulent and corrupt means to manipulate and obtain tainted evidence and strongly suggest an organizational propensity to corruption. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice now have another opportunity to show the German automobile industry that they are serious about holding Mercedes-Benz accountable.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in the whistleblower documents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of VoiceOfAmericaNews.com, or its management. All the charges are accusations of the whistleblower, according to the SEC Complaint documents, and all defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
