HÄRTING.fm is back – with a special series to mark the firm’s 30th anniversary! Over the coming weeks, Dr Martin Schirmbacher and his new co-host Carl Nowak, together with colleagues, will be looking back at extraordinary cases and areas of law from HÄRTING’s 30-year history.
Kicking things off is Christof Elßner, who has been with the firm since its foundation. He recounts one of the most sensational cases from the early days: the corporate scandal surrounding Novum GmbH.
The East Berlin trading company had profited for decades from foreign trade between the GDR and Austria and, at the time of German reunification, managed around half a billion Deutschmarks in accounts in Vienna and Zurich. But who actually owned the assets? The Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) or the SED?
Christof Elßner explains how HÄRTING represented the Federal Republic of Germany in the proceedings, what role the burden of proof played, and why a dispute over GDR party assets ultimately led to civil proceedings against Swiss and Austrian banks.
The story also covers some 50 metres of files, a dedicated ‘Novum Room’, missing documents, and the lessons Christof has taken from this extraordinary case and continues to apply to his work as a litigator to this day.