When Gerco Schroder’s 2012 Olympic mount, London, went up for auction in March this year, it was a storyline straight out of a fairy tale.Eurocommerce Stables London wins the Team Silver for the Netherlands with Schroder. Shortly thereafter, his owners go bankrupt and the horse is seized. London goes under the hammer and Schroder’s immediate career hangs in the balance. Nails are bitten. Hair is pulled. Will Schroder lose his top mount to unfortunate circumstance?!In swoops Austrian gun magnate Gaston Glock with a $15 million cheque to save the day.
Now Glock’s London, the horse changes name but not hands. Schroder’s horse is saved. Rejoice in the happy ending!Or not.According to at least one person, Glock is less knight-in-shining armor than he is devious mastermind.Glock’s ex-wife, Helga, has filed a $500,000 million lawsuit against the 85-year-old gun manufacturer. In it, reports The Daily Beast, she accuses him of “a racketeering scheme that spanned decades and the globe, all in an elaborate plan to steal the business that Mrs. Glock and the rest of their family had helped to build from a mom-and-pop machine shop into a company with $400 million in sales each year.”
The Glocks’ famously divorced in 2011 after 49 years of marriage. By 2010, Gaston had cut his three children out of the family business and his wife and grandchildren out of his life. When the divorce finalized, his wife was out of the company too. He went on to marry Tschikof and name her to the company’s advisory board. London, it turns out, was a gift for his young wife.Now Helga is coming for the money.
This latest lawsuit, filed in an Atlanta federal court earlier this week, is an assorted laundry list of alleged douche baggery—from slush funds and strippers to sham companies and stolen inheritances. All sealed with the classic line: “Trust me, it’s all for the family.” (Allegedly.)The Daily Beast has all the sordid details of the 350-plus page lawsuit. It’s more salacious than a V.C. Andrews novel.One thing is for sure: London has the most sensational backstory of any horse in the Grand Prix ring. This week, anyway.
This article was amended on 28 March 2022. An earlier version said Gaston Glock married “Katrin Tschikof” and referred to her as “a nurse who had treated Gaston following a stroke in 2008”. Representatives for Kathrin Glock contacted us on March 28, to say that she has never worked as a nurse and that they met in 2004. Also the spelling of the first name of Kathrin Glock was corrected.