Walter Wolf (entrepreneur)

Walter Wolf (2012)

Walter Wolf (born October 5, 1939 in Graz ) is an Austro - Canadian entrepreneur and former racing team owner .

Life

Walter Wolf was born in Styria to a Swabian mason from Reutlingen and a Slovenian mother. His childhood was marked by the hardships of the post-war period - his parents were almost destitute. Wolf financed his school career by selling old metal parts. In 1960, at the age of 21, he decided to emigrate to Canada. Wolf initially made a sporting career in Canada: in 1964 he took part in the Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck as part of the Canadian downhill team. In addition, Wolf started a career as a building contractor and then entered the oil business. There he initially supplied drill bits for oil production systems and at times employed over 300 divers to look for new oil deposits. Later he went into the sale of crude oil himself, which - aided by the oil crisis in 1973 and 1974 - brought him considerable wealth. Wolf cultivated excellent relationships with the Arab (oil) economy and maintained close contacts with political giants worldwide.

Wolf attracted attention through his involvement in Formula 1 in the mid-seventies, when he bought the underfunded team of enthusiast Frank Williams in 1976 and renamed it Walter Wolf Racing . Williams then re-founded his team, while Wolf took part in the Formula 1 World Championship from 1977 with the South African Jody Scheckter . The team hit the bang: Scheckter won the young racing team's first Grand Prix in Argentina . After two more wins and a few podium finishes, Scheckter was runner-up behind the Austrian Niki Lauda .

The Wolf Team crew preparing for the 1979 Monaco GP

After the team could no longer build on this early success, Wolf lost interest in his "toy" and without further ado sold his team to the two-time Brazilian world champion Emerson Fittipaldi , who merged it with his own team Copersucar in order to take advantage of England as a location to secure.

For Wolf, withdrawing from motorsport also meant withdrawing from public life. It was not until 2005 that his name reappeared in the media - in connection with a charge against him for possible credit fraud amounting to almost 900,000 euros, from which he was acquitted.

From 2012, Wolf was tried as a defendant in connection with bribe payments because of the purchase of Finnish Patria AMV tanks by the Slovenian Army at the Vienna Regional Court and also in Slovenia. While the gun lobbyist Hans-Wolfgang Riedl was sentenced to three years imprisonment for tax fraud and bribe payments in 2013, he was acquitted of the charge of involvement in a criminal organization. Since several people are required for a criminal organization and Wolf was the only other person charged with it after the acquittal, the proceedings against him were interrupted. The proceedings before the district court in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as a result of which the Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša was sentenced to two years in prison, also led to an international arrest warrant for pretrial detention against Wolf in 2013. This was carried out in January 2015 in Ottawa, Canada, but Wolf was later released on bail. On August 10, 2015, allegations of corruption in Slovenia, according to which several hundred thousand euros are said to have flowed as bribes, expired. As a result, the arrest warrant and the ordered pre-trial detention were canceled.

Trivia

The name of the Austro-Canadian is the inspiration for the Croatian cigarette brand Walter Wolf .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical details about Walter Wolf (on Research-racing.de)
2. ^ "Walter Wolf acquitted in Graz" (Orf.at on October 12, 2005)
3. ↑ Patria Trial: Not Guilty: Patria Trial: Not Guilty. wien.orf.at, January 18, 2012, accessed on January 1, 2016 . 
4. ^ Corruption affair: Austro-Canadian Walter Wolf arrested. derstandard.at, January 20, 2015, accessed on January 1, 2016 . 
5. ↑ Patria crime thriller: Walter Wolf arrested in Canada. kurier.at, January 20, 2015, accessed on January 1, 2016 . 
6. ^ Patria affair: allegations against Wolf apparently barred. orf.at, August 11, 2015, accessed January 1, 2016 . 
7. ↑ “Start for 'Walter Wolf' cigarettes” ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Trafikantenzeitung 5/2005, p. 32, PDF; 3.2 MB)