Jeanette Harksen: I was naive
2003-03-26 19:37
Hamburg - The wife of "king of the con-men" Juergen Harksen admitted from the witness stand in a German courtroom Wednesday that she had been "horribly naive" about her husband, who has admitted cheating scores of investors in Germany and South Africa out of millions of dollars.
But Jeanette Harksen, 40, testified that she was "blithely unaware" of his crimes, despite the fact that she co-signed contracts and gave him carte blanche to funnel funds into and out of her own bank accounts.
"I signed documents without knowing what they were," she testified during Wednesday's proceedings against her 42-year-old husband, who has been dubbed the "king of the con-men" by the German press for cheating investors out of nearly $20m in the 1990s.
Jeanette Harksen was just 16 when she met her future husband in Tunisia. When they met again she had just received her medical degree and he was a "junior investment broker", she told the court.
The set up housekeeping and began raising children, with her having "little interest or knowledge" of how he earned his living.
"I was a physician and a mother and frankly just wasn't interested in business dealings," she said from the witness stand. "He would tell me what he was working on and it would go in one ear and out the other because I didn't have a clue what he was talking about."
She added: "I loved and trusted my husband, so I naturally assumed he was honest in his dealings."
She even believed the tall tales he invented to impress would-be investors.
A smooth-talking jet-setter accused of swindling the rich and famous in Germany and South Africa, Harksen has admitted to the court that his investment schemes in the early 1990s were all a fraud. He has said the gullible rich placed $50m in his hands, but that he had handed back three quarters of that to them.
He faces specimen charges of fraud involving $2m obtained from three investors on 80 occasions between 1990 and 1992.
Harksen has told the court he was able to bilk 100 people out of money because his victims were too cowed and embarrassed to admit they had been taken in by him. In many cases, he said, they were so greedy that they were eager to send good money after bad.
Even after 100 failures to repay, investors would go on to give him money 200 times over, he said.
"When they get greedy, it makes them blind. Greed obstructs all reason," he said.
Witnesses have told how investors, impressed by Harksen's yacht, fast cars, luxurious home and gifts to charity, poured money into his Hamburg company, Nordanalyse, believing they would receive up to 1 300% back on their money.
Harksen, who has previously dismissed the accusations of fraud, was extradited last year from Cape Town to Hamburg after years of using legal technicalities to avoid arrest and prevent his expulsion.
His wife, a co-defendant in the Hamburg proceedings, testified on Wednesday that she now realises she had been "horribly naive" in aiding and abetting her husband in his fraudulent schemes.
"I relinquished control of my own financial dealings to him," she said. "I handed over control of my life to him. I was horribly naive and I accept responsiblity for that," she said.
"I want to take charge of my life from now on," she said.
The proceedings resume Monday. - Sapa-DPA
- SAPA