The Swiss Financier, The Restaurant Bill, And the Court Case

GoldFinger

19 April 2006

GoldFinger was interested to read an interview in Die Weltwoche last week with Dieter Behring, the Basel financier who currently faces fraud charges in Switzerland. Mr Behring and colleagues from his investment company Moore Park group, based in the Bahamas, are currently under investigation by the Swiss police and the Office of the Attorney General in Switzerland for embezzling client money, money laundering and fraud. The Swiss financier said in the interview that he was not responsible for losses of more than SFr1.2 billion ($941 million). He said they were the responsibility of others who had bought licenses to use his computerized trading system. All the funds were held by Moore Park and had nothing to do with him. Mr Behring added that he had nothing to do with managing assets and that fund managers made speculative investments with no reference to him. Mr Behring was arrested by the Swiss authorities in October 2004 and spent the next seven months in prison, before he was released pending further investigations. Whatever the outcome of the investigations into Mr Behring's and his colleagues' dealings at Moore Park - and the Office of the Attorney General said any legal case against the group is unlikely to come to court before 2007 - GoldFinger will always remember Mr Behring for a slightly more frivolous episode. Just before Mr Behring was arrested, he managed, along with seven of his colleagues, to spend £42,000 at one of London’s top restaurants, Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus. A cool £12,300 was shelled out for a bottle of 1947 Chateau Petrus Pomerol, according to reports at the time. The good times have come to an abrupt holt for Mr Behring.