Twelve years in prison for attacker after acid attack

After the acid attack on the energy manager Bernhard Günther in Haan near Düsseldorf, a 42-year-old Belgian has been imprisoned for twelve years. The district court of Wuppertal convicted him on Thursday of intentionally causing serious and dangerous bodily harm. The accused had protested his innocence until the last day of the trial: he was not involved in the crime.

Investigations against a second suspect had been dropped. The martial artist was released due to a lack of sufficient evidence, although Günther said he recognized him.

The now 55-year-old top manager Günther was attacked by two men near his house in Haan near Wuppertal on March 4, 2018, he was showered with highly concentrated sulfuric acid and severely burned.

He has had multiple surgeries. Eyelids and parts of his facial skin had to be transplanted. Numerous other operations are still ahead of him. He rarely left his house without make-up, he reported in the process.

At the beginning of the trial at the end of June, the presiding judge, Holger Jung, spoke of a “high probability of a guilty verdict” for the 42-year-old. A glove with traces of the Belgian's DNA was found at the crime scene.

The court apparently found the man's explanation that the gloves had been stolen from him and placed at the scene of the crime as a false lead unconvincing.

At the time of the attack, Günther was CFO of the then RWE subsidiary Innogy. At that time, the takeover of Innogy by Eon was imminent. Günther suspects that someone in his professional environment at the time who ordered the acid attack was someone who wanted to eliminate him as a competitor. Today, Günther is CFO of the Finnish energy group Fortum, which employs more than 19,000 people.

Hopefully the investigation will not end with the decision, Günther said in court. He hopes that the middlemen and the client of the crime will also be cleared up.