Investor Lars Windhorst offers Hertha BSC to buy back its shares in a dispute over an alleged campaign by an Israeli security company. There is no basis and no perspective for a successful cooperation between the Tennor Group and Hertha BSC, it said in a statement.

On Facebook, Windhorst spoke of major discrepancies with the new President Kay Bernstein, who has been in office since June of this year. “There was never any cooperation at eye level on essential issues of Hertha BSC’s development,” he wrote. Decisions were not coordinated with Windhorst.

Bernstein had his 101st day as President of Hertha BSC on Wednesday. The former Ultra surprisingly won the election after Werner Gegenbauer resigned. Windhorst wanted the long-time boss out of office, and the investor who joined Hertha with his Tennor Group in 2019 left no doubt about that. However, Windhorst dismissed media reports that Windhorst had launched a campaign against Gegenbauer via an Israeli agency as nonsense.

The “Financial Times” was the first to report on Windhorst’s commissioning of the Israeli detective agency Shibumi Strategy. The primary goal of the engagement was therefore to get the then President Werner Gegenbauer out of office through a dirt campaign. The case came out of a trial before a court in Tel Aviv. Shibumi sued Windhorst and Tennor there in early September for around five million euros. Money that the 45-year-old entrepreneur allegedly owes to the Israeli detective agency for their services.

“Instead of working with us on the clarification, President Bernstein decided to join the preliminary convictions without examining the evidence,” Windhorst described the approach of the new club management from his point of view. In a conversation with them, the President named “the break with Tennor” as the goal of his activities.

Under these conditions, further cooperation for the benefit of Hertha BSC is ruled out, economic and sporting goals cannot be achieved in this way, “and the essential basis of our commitment to Hertha BSC is destroyed”. He will therefore end his involvement with Hertha and officially offer the club “to buy back our majority stake of 64.7% at the purchase price at the time”. Windhorst invested 374 million euros for its shares.

As the “Spiegel” reported, the Hertha Presidium wants to decide on Wednesday evening about an application for Windhorst to be excluded from the club. The club pointed out that they generally do not comment on the content of the regular meetings in advance. In addition, one will not anticipate the investigation of the espionage affair by a law firm. If Windhorst were to be excluded from the association, the Berlin association court would decide if the presidium applied. Exclusion would not change Tennor’s status as a shareholder.