Quite by accident, I stumbled across an affair that seems fit for treatment as a thriller by Alfred Hitchcock: some seven years ago, an employee of one of Germany’s beleaguered big bad banks was remanded to the custody of a high-security psychiatric hospital after being diagnosed as having chronic paranoid personality disorder. I missed any coverage of this story in the local media but the UK Guardian featured a pretty frightening and unflattering article.
Herr Gustl Mollrath was consigned to incarceration because he insisted that his former employers and co-workers (including his then-wife) were involved in money laundering operations, including smuggling of enormous amounts of euro to Switzerland. Mollrath’s case was cinched once his spouse alleged he was becoming violent towards her, gaslighted, as he grew more and more obsessed with his “conspiracy theories.” Maybe Mollrath’s only crime was being too visionary, realizing not all was above board in the financial sector some three years before everything started imploding and before one had reason to question the integrity of these institutions. While there seems to be holes in the story on both sides, I think it is amazingly chilling that a bank could disappear an inconvenient person or whistle-blower in a dungeon and hold him there for years. Mollrath has been released but probably won’t be vindicated, because the institution is likely to dig in against any admission of wrong-doing, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, and the implication of governors who have since taken up some high position in the German government. What a nightmare to be discredited and have one’s sanity question for daring to question the conduct of banksters. I am sure that this gentleman is not searching for continuing intrigues and further adventures, but I would like to see how this plays out and who else might be tossed in an oubliette.
