Another bizarre episode stemming from the financial ruin caused by the credit crisis. This story from last summer is now popping up again since it's coming to trial. The pensioners probably became carried away with getting rich fast to pad their retirement but isn't that what the bankers were doing? Just as these retirees will deserve whatever happens in court, it's disappointing that we don't see the same with the bankers themselves. How exactly does one lose trillions and yet the only thing that happens is that they receive enough money to pay out hundreds of millions in new bonuses? And remember, it's Wall Street who thinks everyone is being too hard on them. As if this wasn't their doing.
A retired architect and four other pensioners took their financial adviser hostage and held him in a purpose-built prison in Bavaria after their stock market investments failed, a court has heard.
The 74-year-old architect, identified only as Roland K, told a court in Traunstein, southern Germany, that he and his accomplices thought their financial adviser had "cheated and taken the p---" out of them after their investments in the US property market evaporated. As a result, he told the court, they had "decided to invite him for a few days' holiday in Upper Bavaria".
Roland K denied kidnapping but admitted the group, including his seventh wife, 79-year-old Sieglinde, Willi D, 60, and Iris F, 64, a retired doctor, abducted James Amburn at his home in Speyer, southern Germany, in June before transporting him in the boot of a car to Roland K's house at the lakeside resort of Chiemsee, where he had built a prison for him in the cellar.
