(NewsNation) — The mysterious death or disappearance of billionaire Karl-Erivan Haub is taking an even stranger turn. A new report claims he may be alive and well and living in Russia.
The American billionaire, declared dead in a 2018 skiing accident in Switzerland, was recently seen in Moscow and he may have links to Russian spies and corrupt business leaders there.
In 2015, Haub was training for a Swiss ski mountaineering race at the time of his reported death, but his body was never found. Three years later, he was declared legally dead. A new investigation by a German news organization says Haub was identified through Secret Service facial recognition cameras.
Some believe Haub may have faked his death on the Swiss mountain peak.
“The fact that he could easily get from one country to the next, really just by foot, up one mountain in Switzerland down the other in Italy. The fact that he was in contact with a known Russian agent 13 times before his death, and in long phone calls. I do think that there is a probability that he could still be alive and that he faked his own death,” NewsNation national security contributor Tracy Walder said.
Three days before he reportedly died, Haub made 13 calls to a suspected Russian agent, Veronika Ermilova. Some of the calls were lengthy.
The billionaire also had connections with wealthy Russian businessman Sergey Grishin, known as the Scarface Oligarch, who sold Prince Harry and Meghan Markle their California home for $14.7 million dollars. Grishin got his nickname because he owned the house where the 1983 Al Pacino movie “Scarface” was filmed.
In his final days, Haub also called Russian mogul Andrey Suzdaltsev, who ran a bank in Russia known as a Russian laundromat. Investigations found the bank was used to siphon off millions of dollars between 2010 and 2014.