Michael Schumacher's manager took call 'demanding £12million or photos of him would be leaked', blackmail trial hears
11 December 2024, 01:29
Michael Schumacher's manager took a call from an unknown number demanding £12million or photos of him would be leaked, a court has heard.
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Sabine Kehm, 60, was the first witness to testify in the blackmail trial on Tuesday.
She has worked with the Schumacher family for more than 25 years, acting as the manager of both Michael Schumacher and his son, Mick Schumacher.
Three men were arrested in Germany over the summer over allegations they demanded £12.5million (€15 million) from the racing star's family in exchange for not releasing personal photos and videos.
The racing legend, 55, has not been seen in public since his near-fatal skiing accident in France in 2013, which left the star in a six month induced coma following a severe bleed on the brain.
A 53-year-old bouncer, Yilmaz Tozturkan, was arrested alongside his 30-year-old son in June, and a month later the Schumacher family's former security guard Markus Fritsche, also 53, was arrested too.
Fritsche is accused by prosecutors of 'masterminding' a plot to sell private photos of Schumacher.
Read more: Michael Schumacher 'communicates with his eyes' following 2013 skiing accident
Ms Kehm told the court: "I got a call, and it was a number we didn’t recognise, so at first we didn’t answer as we don’t usually to unrecognised numbers.
"But it kept calling and calling so in the end I answered, and it was a man who said he had pictures of Michael, he said that if the family didn’t want them published onto the dark web he could help.
"He said he was a go between, and we would have to pay 15 million euro, he said the money was for the pictures and his go between service."
The material arrived via an email address Tozturkan's son had set up for him in June this year to Schumacher’s office at his family home in Switzerland.
Ms Kehm went on to say: "I recognised them as private photos and when I saw them I thought they could have only come from an employee of ours.
"I was sure it had to be someone from our internal circle that worked for us, I was suspicious from the first moment that it was someone who no longer worked for us."
She said one of the nurses involved with Schumacher’s care "appeared to get on very well with Markus Fritsche".
"I remember I used to see Fritsche and this particular nurse standing together talking," Ms Kehm added.
"But eventually she left, we had issues with her, we had problems with how care was delivered."
According to the Mail, Tozturkan previously told the court that Fritsche handed over 1,500 images, 200 videos and confidential medical details after they met in a cafe.
"He said that he was in possession of this material, and he asked if we could do anything with it. I said 'I will ask but we will definitely be able to do something'," Tozturkan said.
He went on to say: "I was going to try and sell them first but when I didn’t get any interest that’s when I contacted the Schumacher family."
He said he understood the material had been passed on to Fritsche and that the images showed Schumacher in "poor health".
"It’s easy to say things with hindsight, I just thought I could make a little bit of money from the story," he said.
The trial continues.
