Energy manager Bernhard Günther in the courtroom of the Wuppertal district court during the first trial of the acid attack.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf A good five years after the acid attack on the then CFO of Innogy, Bernhard Günther, there was another arrest. The public prosecutor’s office in Wuppertal and the police headquarters in Düsseldorf announced on Wednesday that they arrested a 36-year-old suspect again on Tuesday evening. The Serbian citizen had already been investigated four years ago – but without a result. Now there is an “urgent suspicion,” it said in the joint statement.
Almost a year ago, a Belgian was convicted of the acid attack. The 43-year-old was sentenced to twelve years in prison for intentionally causing serious and dangerous bodily harm. According to the public prosecutor’s office and the police, further “extensive investigations” were carried out after this hearing.
Due to the new evidence, the Serbs, who had already been imprisoned once, could be arrested again. The authorities did not want to give any further information. The investigations, in particular the evaluation of the evidence seized, continued.
Günther, now Chief Transformation Officer at the Finnish energy company Fortum, was attacked by two men in March 2018 about 200 meters from his house in Haan near Wuppertal after a jog. The perpetrators showered him with highly concentrated acid and injured him so badly that the manager had to be taken to a special clinic with serious injuries and at times his life was in danger. Even today he is badly marked by the deed.
The crime caused a stir at the time. An acid attack on a high-ranking manager is unprecedented to this day. Günther’s former employer Innogy, which has since been taken over by competitor Eon, had itself offered a reward of up to 100,000 euros to the perpetrators.
Sluggish investigations
Despite this, the investigations have been sluggish for a long time. The 36-year-old suspect was arrested for the first time in autumn 2019. However, the suspicion could not be substantiated – although Günther was sure that he had recognized the man, a martial artist.
Also read our interviews with Bernhard Günther:
Just two weeks ago, the Federal Court of Justice rejected an appeal requested by the convict and declared the judgment against the Belgian to be final. This had been transferred in the process, above all, through a glove that had been secured at the scene of the crime and on which DNA had been found.
The crime “can hardly be surpassed in terms of rawness and contempt for human beings,” said presiding judge Holger Jung when explaining the verdict – and emphasized that the verdict could only be a “first stage” for the further investigation of the crime. “It was not a single perpetrator, that’s obvious,” said Jung. “One thing is certain: the perpetrator acted on behalf of someone else.”
A second suspect has now been arrested. Günther, now 56 years old, is primarily interested in clarifying the background. For a long time he has suspected a person from his professional environment who wanted to turn him off. He repeated the suspicion at the court hearing.
Günther had already been attacked and beaten up while jogging in 2012. “It’s no coincidence if someone is attacked twice on Sunday morning while jogging in Haan,” he said in the process. According to him, both raids took place in times of professional change. There is only one person who would have benefited from being disabled in both 2012 and 2018. He made a list for both attacks. “The intersection is exactly one person,” Günther emphasized in his statement.
His company at the time, Innogy, was actually going through a difficult phase at the time of the acid attack. A few months earlier, the boss at the time, Peter Terium, had resigned and no successor had yet been appointed. Just a week after the fact, the parent company RWE announced plans to sell Innogy to its competitor Eon.
More: Judgment after acid attack on energy manager: defendant sentenced to twelve years in prison