Gustl Ferdinand Mollath (born 7 November 1956) is a German man who was acquitted during a criminal trial in 2006 on the basis of diminished criminal responsibility. He was subsequently committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital, as the court deemed him a danger to the public and declared him insane based on expert diagnoses of paranoid personality disorder. The judgment became the basis of controversy when elements of his supposed delusions regarding money-laundering activities at a major bank were found to be true. Mollath had consistently claimed there was a conspiracy to have him locked up in a psychiatric care ward because of his incriminating knowledge; evidence discovered in 2012 made his claims appear plausible. In 2006, after being accused of assaulting his former wife, Petra Mollath, Gustl Mollath was tried at the District Court of Nürnberg-Fürth for aggravated assault and wrongful deprivation of personal liberty of his ex-wife as well as damage to property. The court considered the charges proven but acquitted Mollath on the basis of finding him criminally insane. A pivotal argument for Mollath's insanity, besides the general impression he made, was that he insisted his wife was involved in a complex system of tax evasion. The court came to call it a paranoid belief system Mollath had developed, which led him to accuse many people of being part of a conspiracy and acting irrationally and aggressively, by puncturing car tires of people in a way that could lead to accidents. In 2012, the case was widely publicized when evidence brought to the attention of state prosecutors showed that suspicious activities were carried out over several years by members of staff (including Mollath's ex-wife) at the Munich-based HypoVereinsbank, as detailed in an internal audit report carried out by the bank in 2003. The reported money transfers were not illegal per se. In June 2013, Mollath's former wife spoke for the first time to the press. According to her, Gustl Mollath was continually violent towards her, prior and during marriage. The alleged money laundering activities became an issue only after their divorce, which directly contradicts Gustl Mollath's version that he had suffered from the illegal activities of his former wife. Gustl Mollath has denied the allegations levied against him and has said that he was being persecuted for blowing the whistle on tax evasion at HypoVereinsbank. On 6 August 2013, the Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg ordered a retrial and Mollath's immediate release, overturning a verdict of the Regional Court of Regensburg that had blocked a retrial. Mollath's 2018 action for damages by the unlawful custody has been concluded in November 2019 by an ex gratia payment of €600,000 by the defendant Free State of Bavaria.
Early life Gustl Mollath was born 7 November 1956 in Nuremberg. He attended a Waldorf school and obtained an entrance qualification for universities of applied sciences in 1976. He then began to study mechanical engineering, which he subsequently abandoned. Mollath lost his father in 1960 and his mother in 1980, both due to cancer. In 1981 he worked for about two years as a controller at MAN and then founded the automotive Augusto M. workshop, specializing in tyres, vehicle tuning and vintage car restoration. In 1978 he met his future wife Petra Mollath, who worked from 1990 as a financial adviser at HypoVereinsbank. They married in 1991.
Court case and detainment According to Petra Mollath, a violent confrontation and assault happened in August 2001 in their apartment. In 2002, she moved out. In September 2003 Petra Mollath turned to Gabriele Krach, a psychiatrist at "Klinikum am Europakanal", Erlangen, who issued a medical opinion, sourced from her representations, that Gustl Mollath was most likely suffering from a serious psychiatric illness. Petra Mollath transferred this document on 23 September to the District Court of Straubing by fax, whereupon it was used in allegations of aggravated assault, leading to criminal proceedings against Mollath before the District Court of Nuremberg. Mollath twice dismissed proposed assessment dates for his mental state in 2003, first in mid-2004 and again in early 2005. He was therefore admitted by the court to a psychiatric hospital for a psychological assessment. Gustl and Petra Mollath divorced in 2004, and late in 2005 he was charged with assault and accused of damaging car tires (in such a way that they might have caused severe accidents) of various people involved in the case. From February 2006, Mollath was deemed to be a public danger and was held in three different institutions including, from April 2006, the Straubing District Hospital. The District Court Nuernberg-Fuerth eventually acquitted Mollath in August 2006, because of his attested state of mind, yet considered the accusation proven. The court ordered his hospitalization in a psychiatric hospital because he was considered dangerous. The judgment was based, among other things, on the opinion of expert Klaus Leipziger from Bayreuth, who attested to Mollath's paranoid delusions of a "black money complex".
Since mid-2009, Mollath was hospitalized in the District Hospital of Bayreuth.
Political and media discussion Numerous media outlets, in particular the Süddeutsche Zeitung (major German newspaper) and Report Mainz (investigative TV magazine), reported critically for years about the Mollath case, for example about the trial management. They complain about mistakes in the court hearings and the selective consideration of evidence. For their series of articles in the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the Mollath case, Olaf Przybilla and Uwe Ritzer were awarded with the 3rd prize of the Guardian Prize of the German daily press (Wächterpreis der deutschen Tagespresse)
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