Michael Schumacher’s family is fighting to keep his health details out of the ongoing blackmail trial involving his ex-bodyguard.
The F1 legend’s former bodyguard Markus Fritsche is accused of aiding and abetting blackmail of the Schumacher family allegedly using hundreds of private photos, videos and the driver’s medical notes.
He has appeared in court in Germany along with a bouncer and father Yilmaz Tozturkan and his IT expert son Daniel Lins over the alleged extortion plot targeting Schumacher who has been out of the public eye since his catastrophic skiing accident in 2013.
Now the trial has started in Wuppertal, Germany, where Tozturkan, who has been held in custody, is accused of ‘threatening’ the family the photos would be released on the dark web if they failed to pay £12,000,000 (€15,000,000) for the huge dossier.
Tozturkan, a nightclub bouncer and a long-term friend of Fritsche’s, told the court he ‘we will definitely be able to do something’ when he was handed the material.
Schumacher’s wife Corinna has been fiercely protective over the Formula 1 champion since he was left with a life-changing brain injury.
She has now filed an application so that the case could be heard in private.
It would allow the family to request for the public to be excluded from the hearing if Schumacher’s state of health is discussed, the German tabloid Bild reports.
Tozturkan told the court today he received the material around 2021 at ‘the time of Corona,’ according to MailOnline.
Fritsche, who worked in Schumacher’s inner circle until about 2021, allegedly told Tozturkan over a coffee he was ‘in possession of this material and he asked if we could do anything with it,’ the court heard.
The nightclub bouncer said he was given two hard drivers and admitted everything ‘for the most part,’ but he denied buying the pictures.
Tozturkan, 53, said he tried to sell the material first but ‘when I didn’t get any interest that’s when I contacted the Schumacher family,’ adding that hisson only helped to provide him with an email address and ‘didn’t know anything about the blackmail.’
He said he thought he could ‘make a little bit of money from the story.’
He accused Fritsche of coming up with the idea for the plot.
‘It was Fritsche who came up with the idea that we should sell the material for between 10-15 million Euro. I’m telling the truth, you should in court,’ he said.
Fritsche, also 53, appeared in court today after the Wuppertal public prosecutor announced last month they had concluded the investigation into the alleged scheme.
It is thought the Schumacher family was told if they failed to pay the money, the sensitive footage would be uploaded into the dark web.
The ex-bodyguard did not speak in court, but instead his lawyer Harald Benninghoven read out a statement denying blackmail.
He said: ‘Tozturkan and my client are friends, they do business together and they worked at the nightclub.
‘From 2012 my client was employed by the Schumacher family and that job ended in 2020 and in January 2021 he was asked to leave a flat he had been provided.
‘He had also been asked to digitalise photographs for Corinna, while he was working for the Schumacher family, and he did so, saving them on a blue hard drive.
‘One day when he came back to his apartment, everything had been packed away and he assumed it had been done by the Schumacher family and they had the pictures.
‘At no point did they ask him anything about the pictures.’
Tozturkan’s son Daniel spoke in court today and he said he had ‘no idea it was blackmail’ when asked about the plot.
Daniel, 30, said his dad asked him to create an email address that ‘couldn’t be traced’ and that the matter concerned ‘something legal and to do with a lawyer and I didn’t ask any more questions.’
He said all he was that the ‘material concerned a famous person’ about a month before his dad’s arrest.
The Wuppertal public prosecutor Wolf-Tilman Baumert said it ‘wasn’t a very complicated case, all the accused were arrested within two weeks of the investigation being launched.’
He confirmed to MailOnline that the Schumacher family has filed a motion ‘for parts of the case relating to the state of Mr Schumacher’s health to be kept from the public.
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‘I cannot see any reason why the judge would not grant this request and that would mean the public being asked to leave the court when these details are discussed.’
He said the men could be jailed for a maximum of 15 years if convicted.
The judge Birgit Neubert will now decide if there is enough evidence for the case to proceed and four dates have been set aside for further hearings in February.
All eyes are on the Wuppertal court now as rumours are circulating that a member of the Schumacher family could attend the hearing to give evidence.
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