Admitted ”king of the con-men” Jurgen Harksen lashed out at jail conditions in South Africa during his trial in Germany on charges of tricking investors in Germany and South Africa out of millions of dollars.
Harksen (42) is on trial in Hamburg on charges of fraud involving $20-million obtained from three investors on 80 occasions between 1990 and 1992. Harksen was extradited last year from Cape Town to Hamburg after years of using legal technicalities to avoid arrest and prevent his expulsion.
Commenting on the 10 months he spent in jail cells in South Africa, a visibly perturbed Harksen said, ”I wouldn’t wish that on my own worst enemy.”
Calling jail conditions dire, he said, ”They aren’t fit for animals.”
Tuesday’s proceedings saw prosecutors calling three new witnesses to the stand to testify against Harksen, following damning testimony last week from victims of his bogus investment schemes.
Harksen ”should have won an Oscar” for his ability to sweet-talk investors out of millions of dollars, a witness testified on Friday.
The Hamburg construction contractor, who invested $10-million in a non-existent Scandinavian development scheme, said Harksen had an uncanny ability to shed tears when investors asked where their money was.
”He cried more than any man I’ve ever seen,” the witness testified. ”He would sob and carry on and swear by the life of his own children that this investment was all on the up-and-up.”
Saying he has ”enough worthless shares to paper my living room with, the 49-year-old contractor added, ”Harksen should have won an Oscar for the melodramatic performances he gave.”
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 $50-million in his hands, but that he had handed back three quarters of that to them.
Harksen (42) has told the court he was able to trick 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.
His wife, 40-year-old Jeanette, a co-defendant in the Hamburg proceedings, testified last week 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 responsibility for that,” she said.
”Now I want to take charge of my life from now on,” she said. – Sapa-DPA