“The firearms industry is a family,” said S&W’s new president, Robert Scott. “We need to be part of that family.” The NRA, in turn, heaped honors on Scott, letting it be known that Smith & Wesson was absolved of its sins. Gun shops began selling the company’s products again. The yearlong boycott ended.
After the 2000 presidential election finally ended in victory for George W. Bush, Andrew Cuomo left Washington to prepare to run for office in his home state of New York. The new resident of the White House made it clear that the litigation war against the gun industry was over. As governor of Texas, Bush had signed a state statute barring municipal lawsuits against gun companies. In his second term in the White House, he signed a similar law passed by Congress. The federal measure marked the official end of the city suits. Those that had not already been dismissed by judges were extinguished by the federal statue. Apart from keeping a lot of lawyers busy, the campaign to restrict gun manufacturing and marketing via the courts had accomplished nothing.
CHAPTER 17
An Assassin’s Attack
Gaston Glock arrived in Luxembourg in July 1999 for an urgent talk with the shell company artist Charles Ewert. In ordering the meeting, Glock had told Ewert he wanted to discuss company finances—matters best addressed in person. Glock did not sound pleased.
For fifteen years, Ewert had served as a director of Glock GmbH and a corporate trustee. Ewert sometimes suggested to others—out of Glock’s presence—that he was the Austrian’s partner in the firearm business. Glock saw Ewert as more of an adviser and international representative. Hearing the stern tone of Glock’s voice, the Luxembourger had to worry about what was on the company owner’s mind.
Ewert picked up his guest personally at the airport. Before proceeding to their meeting, he suggested that Glock take a look at a new sports car he had just acquired. It was parked in a garage on the Boulevard Prince Henri. Glock agreed.
At the car park, Ewert guided Glock to the third underground level, where they found themselves alone. Ewert pointed out the snazzy roadster, and Glock approached on foot to take a closer look.
Suddenly, a tall man stepped out of the shadows, lunging at Glock. The Austrian raised his arms defensively. The attacker, his face obscured by a stocking mask, swung a large rubber mallet of the sort normally used to install bathroom tile. With a vicious overhand motion, he struck Glock on the top and side of the head.
Rather than intervene to help Glock, Ewert turned and ran for the stairwell. “I am a coward,” he would explain later.
Glock, meanwhile, was fighting for his life. The gun maker, who usually carried a pistol, lacked one on this day. With no other option, Glock fought with his hands. He swung his large fist into his attacker’s eye and mouth. Though seventy, the industrialist put up a stout defense. His frequent swims in the frigid lake near his villa in Velden had helped him maintain a younger man’s stamina. Glock drew blood and knocked out several of his attacker’s teeth. Despite the hammer blows to his skull, he gained the advantage.
Apparently summoned by Ewert, the police soon arrived. They found a bizarre scene, according to John Paul Frising, Luxembourg’s deputy attorney generaclass="underline" The bloodied aggressor lay collapsed on top of Glock, “with his arms outstretched like Jesus.” The bleeding victim was pinned to the ground but not mortally wounded. Glock’s attacker was unconscious.
The mallet-wielding assassin was identified as Jacques Pecheur, a sixty-seven-year-old former professional wrestler and member of the French Foreign Legion, whose nickname was Spartacus. With credentials like his, and with the benefit of surprise, one might have expected a more effective performance from Pecheur. The police assumed that the attacker had not been prepared for the fight Glock put up.
Whatever the reasons for Pecheur’s failure, the real question was “For whom was he acting?” noted the local newspaper Luxemburger Land , and “for what reason?”
Glock had suffered a total of seven hammer blows to the head, along with other cuts and abrasions, and he lost a liter of blood. At the hospital, though, he was strikingly composed. He posed for a police photographer with a placid expression on his face. Before doctors finished patching him up, he summoned his personal bankers from UBS and Banque Ferrier Lullin. Those two institutions held $70 million of his cash in accounts to which Ewert had access. Within three hours of the attack, Glock had moved $40 million to a secret Swiss account.
Ewert was busy too. He blocked the other $30 million from being transferred, Glock would later learn. Clearly, all was not well between the two men.
Ewert had established Glock affiliates in Switzerland, France, Hong Kong, and Uruguay, among other locations. Gaston Glock had approved of the proliferating corporate structure and told his family and Austrian executives that if anything ever happened to him, they should rely on Ewert in deciding what to do with the company. “I was considered the eldest son,” Ewert bragged.
Earlier that spring, Glock had received a telephone call from a former employee of his company’s Geneva office. The former employee said Ewert had been stealing from Glock. The Luxembourg financial adviser had siphoned funds from the company to buy a house in Switzerland, according to the informant.
Gaston Glock didn’t believe the accusation at first. He was concerned enough, though, to ask Ewert to meet in Luxembourg, leading to the fateful attack in the underground parking lot.
Police investigators found Ewert’s business card in Pecheur’s car, a strange mistake for a putative hit man to commit. The investigators discovered that the two had become acquainted at a gun range in Paris in 1998. The detectives concluded that Ewert, realizing Glock had discovered his embezzlement in Switzerland, had hired Pecheur to kill the old man. The use of the rubber hammer, as opposed to a gun or a knife, suggested that Ewert and Pecheur planned to make the killing look like an innocent accident: that Glock had fallen and hit his head.
That the plotters thought repeated mallet blows would be mistaken for a tumble down a stairwell was one of several odd aspects of the plot. Another was Ewert’s presence at the scene of the attack. Someone who goes to the trouble of hiring a retired French Foreign Legionnaire to kill a prominent businessman would ostensibly want to fabricate an alibi. Any experienced police detective will tell you that many criminals are surprisingly dumb, but this had to be one of the least competent high-profile contract murders ever attempted.
After he recovered, Gaston Glock told the authorities that he had discovered that Ewert had set up numerous additional offshore companies without his permission. Glock’s lawyers alleged that Ewert had stolen not just money to buy a Swiss chalet, but some $100 million of Glock funds. The embezzled cash had been channeled into the secret shell companies. The Glock lawyers claimed that Ewert had attempted to take control of Unipatent, the main Glock holding company in Luxembourg, and its chief asset: a 50 percent stake in Glock, Inc., the American operating subsidiary that generated the vast majority of Glock revenue. In due course, the Luxembourg prosecutor, Frising, charged Ewert and Pecheur with attempted murder.
Ewert’s attorneys claimed he had nothing to do with the attack. Ewert insisted he was framed and that he did not know Pecheur. But he could not explain how his business card ended up in the attacker’s car. The defense team insisted on behalf of their client that Glock had approved of all of Ewert’s corporate activities, including Ewert’s takeover of Unipatent. There had been no secrets between the two men, Ewert maintained. Glock had retained Ewert specifically to set up the network of paper corporate entities around the world as a tax dodge. In return, Ewert was to receive certain ownership interests in the Glock affiliates he created.