Inheritance worth millions for a political party - How we were able to identify the legal beneficiaries of the inheritance

We usually receive our investigative assignments from guardians of estates, courts, private individuals and various institutions. However, the case of R. Strangfeld is special in every respect.

On January 5, 2023, an article appeared in the news magazine DER SPIEGEL, which took a closer look at the background of a special inheritance case. It was about the engineer R. Strangfeld, who died in 2018 and who had bequeathed more than 10 million to the party "Alternative for Germany" (AfD). R. Strangfeld had come to a considerable fortune due to his inventions in the sanitary field. After his death, countless gold bars were found, some of which he had hidden in his house and some of which he had kept in a safe deposit box in Luxembourg.

Documents that surfaced at the end of 2022 suggested that the decedent may have been incapable of making a will. According to the news magazine's information, the legal heirs were unknown.

That same evening, we began to investigate the relatives who were still alive and soon had our first successes. The research led us to Silesia, among other places, where the father of the decedent came from. In the meantime, we have been able to identify almost all of the heirs, and the responsible probate court has received an application to revoke the certificate of inheritance already issued in 2019 due to considerable doubts about its accuracy. We are curious to see how the case will develop further. Now, however, a different expertise than that of the heir investigators is required for the time being: In order to be able to make a statement about the doubtful testamentary capacity of a testator, a detailed psychological expert opinion is usually necessary.

These and many other details of the case of R. Strangfeld can be read in the current issue of SPIEGEL (25/2023) or at SPIEGEL online.