Glock: The Rise of America's Gun

by Paul M Barrett

  Charles Ewert earned his living operating along this murky line. He served as a financial adviser to wealthy individuals and had worked for the Luxembourg stock exchange. Glock told Ewert that he was seeking to expand his firearm corporation while minimizing its tax liability.

  “I am your man,” Ewert said.

  Asked in 1995 during a legal deposition about his relationship with Ewert, Glock explained defensively: “I was not a salesman. I am a technician. I had no experience, no English, so I had to find a partner that helps me to sell the pistol.”

  Ewert was not really a salesman or a conventional business partner. Rakish and multilingual, he had connections all over the world. He acquired the sobriquet “Panama Charly” in recognition of his activity in Latin America. He was a financial fixer. At Glock’s request, Ewert set up a web of paper corporations intended to insulate the gun business from government taxing authorities in the United States and Austria, and from American product-liability lawyers who thought about suing a profitable firearm manufacturer. With Ewert’s assistance, Gaston Glock purchased a Panamanian shell called Reofin International. Reofin, in turn, bought Unipatent Holding, a Luxembourg entity that Ewert owned. Unipatent received a 50 percent stake in Glock’s unit in the United States, where the company generated the vast majority of its revenue. Half the wealth from American gun sales ended up flowing to Glock’s putative co-owner, Unipatent, which, in fact, Glock controlled via the paper company in Panama. The complexity, though seemingly gratuitous, made following Glock’s money more difficult.

  Ewert also formed shells for Glock in Ireland, Liberia, and Curaçao. These corporate entities issued bills for various “services” to Glock headquarters in Austria and to operating units that were established in Latin America and Hong Kong. One effect of the various arms of Glock owning and billing one another was to decrease the profits that had to be reported in Austria and the United States, which are relatively high-tax jurisdictions. Many companies seek to lessen their tax bills in a similar fashion. Tax attorneys at the most prestigious law firms in Manhattan devote their working lives to corporate tax minimization. Whether all of this is accomplished within the letter and spirit of the relevant laws is sometimes a close question.

  Vociferously proud of his pistol and its commercial success, Gaston Glock was shy about publicly discussing the maze of shell companies constructed by Ewert. During the 1990s, he was asked repeatedly in the course of civil lawsuits in the United States about the convoluted ownership structure of his companies. He gave answers that, at best, seem uninformative. On various occasions, he testified that he did not own—or did not know who owned—Unipatent, the shell that theoretically controlled fully half of Glock, Inc. In one case, an injury-liability suit called Shultz v. Glock , filed in state court in New Jersey, Gaston Glock was asked in a deposition, “Do you know who owns Glock, Inc.?”

  “Glock, Inc., is owned by Glock Austria and Unipatent,” he responded.

  “Do you know who the principals of Unipatent are, who owns the company?”

  “I don’t know,” Glock said.

  “Do you have any ownership interest in that entity?”

  “No.”

  In fact, Reofin International owned Unipatent, and Gaston Glock owned Reofin. Glock either suffered from acute and conveniently timed memory loss, or he did not want to share this information with a plaintiffs’ lawyer who might have cause to track down Glock assets. (Since the company rarely suffered a courtroom defeat, the issue was largely academic.)

  But Glock did not conceal his relationship with Panama Charly from employees. Executives in Smyrna sometimes addressed corporate correspondence to Ewert as a “director” or “managing director” of Glock GmbH, the Austrian parent company. Ewert occasionally visited the United States to meet with Gaston Glock. At the Smyrna offices, workers referred sneeringly to Ewert behind his back as “the Duke,” because of his aristocratic affectations.

  Florian Deltgen, who worked briefly for Glock, Inc., as a sales manager in the late 1990s, was well aware of Ewert’s reputation. An experienced gun industry executive, Deltgen was born in Luxembourg. His father, decades earlier, had retained Ewert as a consultant but soon fired him. “My father realized this man was cheating him,” Deltgen told me. “Everyone in Luxembourg knew Charles Ewert as a thief.” Deltgen, who left Glock, Inc., after a falling-out with Gaston Glock, professed to know nothing firsthand about the Glock-Ewert relationship. He did know this: “If you deal with thieves, they may turn on you.”

  / / /

  As Glock continued to ascend in the American gun industry, the company’s rituals grew more elaborate. Sharon Dillon of the Gold Club was eclipsed by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. For a couple of years in the mid-1990s, the National Football League’s premier sideline sex symbols performed at the Glock SHOT Show party in midriff-baring tops and supershort white hot pants. Invitation-only guests watched the entertainment as they ate thick steaks or two-pound lobsters. The gun industry had not previously witnessed such razzle-dazzle. Chipper and athletic, the Cowgirls brought the crowd to its feet as they high-kicked and shimmied through a floor show backed by loud pop music.

  “Gaston Glock was the king of that world,” Robert Ricker, a former NRA lawyer and industry lobbyist, said in an interview before his death from cancer. “The girls, the guns, the money and liquor—and at the center of it all was this Austrian engineer none of us really knew very well.”

  In later years, the Glock party took a turn from American heartland-kitsch toward Turkish exotica. Glock imported an Austrian belly dancer as the main attraction at the SHOT Show. The dancer had impressed Glock when he saw her entertain in Vienna. During each of her visits in the late 1990s, she practiced for several days in the basement gym of the Glock residence in the Vinings, which was equipped with a dance bar and wall-length mirror, according to Bereczky.

  The Middle Eastern–style diversion drew lusty cheers from the gun crowd. “You’ve got the Turkish harem music, and the spotlight on this belly dancer,” recalled Ricker. “A lot of people didn’t know whether it was a joke, or what. But, hey, it was the Glock party, so you went with it.”

  Ricker for a time worked with Richard Feldman at the ASSC, which was eager to ingratiate itself with Gaston Glock. With Jannuzzo’s encouragement, the company agreed to give the trade group $1 for each gun shipped from Smyrna. The annual Glock donation grew to more than $120,000 a year—the largest contribution the ASSC received from any single company, according to Feldman.

  Feldman sometimes accompanied Mr. Glock on outings to the Gold Club, where the usually taciturn Austrian was able to unwind. Some of the dancers knew the free-spending magnate by sight, and on a couple of occasions they brought him up on stage for a round of applause. One evening, Glock received a varsity-style Gold Club jacket, which the dancers autographed. On another visit, to celebrate Glock’s birthday, the erotic entertainers invited the gun maker to the stage and then playfully stripped him down to his boxer shorts, dark dress socks, and black shoes, according to Jannuzzo. Far from resisting, Glock helped remove his shirt and slacks, grinning broadly the whole time. He had come a long way from running his radiator factory in suburban Vienna.

  / / /

  In Austria, the date of Glock’s birth is known to his employees and admirers as “Glockmas.” Celebrants mark the event with the presentation of ice sculptures and toasts of praise. Champagne and wooden casks of wine accompany a spread of Wiener schnitzel, sausage wrapped in flaky pastry, and other traditional Austrian fare. And Glock thanks attendees in the style of a country baron blessing his peasants.

  Glock spent an increasing amount of his time in Velden in the southern state of Carinthia. A favorite spot for the bourgeoisie of Austria and Germany, the resort featured water sports, pricey jewelry stores, restaurants, and boutique hotels. Here the once-shy engineer carried himself like the mogul he had become: imperious, proud, demanding of respect. “A person changes when they make a lot of money, and they go to Amer
ica and see they are famous there,” observed Wolfgang Riedl, the former Glock executive. “Suddenly, everyone wants to know what they can do for Mr. Glock. He thinks he is important. In a way, he is.”

  Glock became a more expansive host. He no longer left guests without so much as a glass of water while he ate lunch alone. He held court at sumptuous dinners and took his senior employees for rides on his boat across the Wöthersee, a large and scenic lake down the hill from his villa. Sometimes the destination was the village’s main lakeside casino. Upon the entrance of Glock and his entourage, the casino manager would signal to the conductor of the house jazz band, and the musicians halted whatever they were playing. After a moment’s pause, the band would swing into a brassy rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.”

  “This was the Glock theme: ‘I did it my way,’ ” explained Florian Deltgen. Gaston Glock sat at his reserved table, and one by one, members of the serving staff came by to pay homage.

  Glock’s three adult children remained in his close orbit but fit awkwardly into his social and business life. The patriarch cast a long and intimidating shadow. Gaston Jr. worked as an engineer for the family company, without enjoying significant executive responsibilities. Introspective and unassuming, the middle child rarely asserted himself. Brigitte, the eldest, had a more outgoing personality, but her father restricted her to low-level administrative tasks within the company. She joked bitterly that he treated her as a personal slave. For a time, she was married to a Glock marketing executive.

  Robert, the younger son, had a confident swagger. He wore his jet-black hair slicked back and favored tailored leather jackets. His father dispatched Robert as a front man to trade shows and for a while set him up as the company’s top representative in the United States. But eventually Robert was called back to Austria. He never had much real authority in the company. American executives with Glock either laughed at him behind his back or expressed sympathy for the patronizing way his father treated him.

  Deltgen recalled that Robert was a reckless driver whose fender benders kept local mechanics busy repairing his sports cars. With a gun, he could be even more of a menace. “On a visit to Deutsch-Wagram, I was with someone else from the US, and Robert was going to demonstrate the latest modifications on the Glock pistol,” Deltgen said. “Suddenly the gun goes off, and we’re ducking for our lives.”

  / / /

  A former Socialist Party loyalist, Gaston Glock mixed with the politically powerful of Carinthia, a stronghold of Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party. The region was known for its residents’ animus toward immigrants and for pockets of nostalgia for the Third Reich. The Freedom Party’s charismatic leader, Jörg Haider, who served for many years as the governor of Carinthia, was notorious internationally for making a series of provocative pro-Nazi statements in the 1990s. He praised elite SS troops as “men of character,” and he hailed the wisdom of Hitler’s “orderly employment policy.”

  During one visit to Austria, Paul Jannuzzo recalled, Glock told him they would “take a beer” before dinner and meet some local friends. At the restaurant where Glock took him, “there was a bit of an unidentified buzz in the air,” Jannuzzo said, “and it reached its crescendo when the star arrived”: Jörg Haider. The politician shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with Glock and the others.

  “It was the Beer Hall Putsch Redux,” Jannuzzo said ruefully. Uncomfortable mixing with the Haider crowd, the American lawyer decided to step outside—“in case the Israelis decided to use this occasion to take out Haider and his group with a cruise missile.”

  Over the years, Glock vehemently denied Austrian media reports linking him to the Freedom Party. But several employees were aware of his friendliness with Haider.

  / / /

  By the late 1990s, the gun business had made Gaston Glock a billionaire. Estimating the size of his fortune was (and is) difficult, because most of it remains tied up in his privately held corporation. The shares of Glock GmbH do not trade on an exchange and therefore do not have a price. Valued conservatively, the company and its offshoots are probably worth $500 million, according to executives and investors familiar with the gun industry. Glock has invested in real estate in Atlanta and southern Austria worth tens of millions of dollars more. He has two corporate jets worth eight figures and a helicopter that ferries him around Austria (probably worth another $3 million or $4 million). He owns expensive show horses. It is impossible to say how much cash he has stashed away.

  For all his wealth, though, Glock has spent his money awkwardly, in fits and starts. He has never seemed entirely comfortable living large. His ostentation has been tentative.

  When his senior American employees traveled to Velden for consultations, Glock often had them stay at his villa, an enormous structure decorated in pink-and-white Italian marble, glittering crystal chandeliers, and heavy brocade curtains. The home cost millions to build, but guests wiped their shoes on tacky black-and-silver Glock-branded doormats. Inside the front door were withered houseplants turning shades of yellow and brown. The parlors were filled with expensive white couches and divans, but some were wrapped in transparent plastic, presumably to prevent stains. A garish fake leopard skin was draped across one living room sofa. Guest room beds were made up with slippery silk sheets the color of Pepto-Bismol. Glock did not obsess about thread count.

  The master of the mansion spent much of his time in a windowless basement room, according to visitors. From this underground bunker, he could control the villa’s security cameras and alarms, as well as the air-conditioning and elevator. He could even set the temperature of the heated tile floors in the many bathrooms upstairs. “He was down there alone for hours,” Jannuzzo said.

  Glock employed a cleaning staff and a computer technician but no other household servants. He drove his own BMW and never graduated from the $80,000 car to a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley. He frequented pricey restaurants, but typically those popular with tourists, rather than the most exclusive establishments. He insisted on caviar for the whole table and plentiful bottles of Gray Goose vodka, yet he demonstrated unease ordering from an elaborate wine list. One of his favorite spots was Essigbratlein, a dining establishment in Nuremberg, Germany, where Glock traveled for business. Originally a sixteenth-century meeting place for wine merchants, the tiny restaurant is famous for its roast loin of beef. But it is hardly extravagant by the standards of corporate titans or movie stars. A six-course dinner of Franconian cuisine can be had for $120.

  When visiting Austria, Glock employees ate all their meals with their hosts. Mr. Glock dominated the conversation, often holding forth on physical fitness and human longevity. On occasion, he discussed his intention to live to the age of 120. The key to his biblical durability, he said, was a substance called megamine, which he consumed daily. Just what he was ingesting is not clear. There are various dietary supplements of dubious value that are marketed under names similar to megamine. A company called NaturalMost sells Megamino Amino Acid Complex “for the satisfactory maintenance of physiological functions.” Glock described megamine as a derivative of volcanic ash, which when ground finely and taken orally, could enter human cells and purge them of impurities.

  Business meetings with Mr. Glock in his large office in the villa at Velden lasted hours at a time. Typically, executives presented him with a decision—whether to move ahead with a hiring, firing, or scheduling of a promotional event—followed by extended periods of silent rumination. Glock stared out his window at the broad lawn and tall trees surrounding the villa. “One hundred words per hour is probably a high estimate,” Jannuzzo said, speaking of Glock’s verbal contributions. Another Glock in-house lawyer, Peter Manown, occupied himself by surreptitiously conjugating verbs in German, scribbling on a pad as if he were taking notes about company matters.

  Visiting executives were at the Glocks’ command twenty-four hours a day. Jannuzzo recalled an autumn Sunday morning in Velden: “At about six thirty a.m., there was a knock at my door, and it was Mrs. G
lock: ‘Time for swim.’ ” The villa had a heated indoor pool, but this day’s exercise would commence outdoors in the Wöthersee. Wearing a bathrobe, Gaston Glock led the way down to the dock. He signaled for the others to enter the frigid water first, which they did. Upon surfacing and looking back up at the dock, Jannuzzo saw his employer disrobing. “All you could see from the rear was a long skinny body, some semblance of ass, and a ball sack.” While Mrs. Glock and the executive were clothed conventionally in swimsuits, Glock himself took his constitutional au naturel.

  CHAPTER 15

  Glock Culture

  American gun owners express enthusiasm for firearms in distinct and varied ways. Would-be cowboys dress up in Old West costumes, assume the identities of frontier marshals and gunslingers, and collect single-action Colts. They compete in target shoots that feature re-created nineteenth-century saloons and poker games gone bad. The more serious single-action shooters display the intensity of Civil War reenactors.

  Sniper-rifle disciples gather in groups of two or three at un-decorated rural ranges. They speak softly and peer through high-powered scopes before squeezing off a shot at a plywood bull’s-eye six hundred yards away. They assess their accuracy with binoculars and recalibrate for another go. Machine-gun enthusiasts, who must register their automatic weapons with federal and local authorities, gather for a twice-yearly festival at a Kentucky gun club called Knob Creek. Participants fire at abandoned washing machines and refrigerators, although more emphasis is placed on quantity of ammunition expended than on accuracy.

  At the more conventional end of the gun-owning spectrum, hunters track everything from gray squirrels to white-tailed deer to grizzly bear. Some use bolt-action rifles based on the 1903 Springfield; others prefer AR-15s with flash suppressors and thirty-round mags that resemble the rifles American troops carry on patrol in Kandahar or Kabul.