INTERVIEW: German prosecutor’s handling of U.S. businessman’s case raises concerns
THE LOWDOWN:
Daniel Starr, the head of global affairs for AppLovin, hopped on the phone with the Washington Reporter to talk about the investigation and his new civil lawsuit against the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
While traveling to Europe in 2022, Starr, a Jewish American, was arrested on an Interpol warrant requested by the Bonn Public Prosecutor's Office on the allegations that a business he briefly owned years prior dodged value-added taxes.
Starr said that three years after his arrest, the German prosecutor is continuing to leave his investigation open even though the company has been closed for several years and there’s “been no new news.”
The plight faced by Starr is one he warned that someone without his means “would look a lot worse” in the same situation. He added that he hears “a lot of people complaining about America” and that it “really upsets” him because, while the U.S. isn’t perfect, “we’re just about as good as it gets on this Earth.”
A German prosecutor's handling of a legal case involving a prominent U.S. businessman has raised concerns on Capitol Hill and in the Trump administration, according to multiple sources.
Daniel Starr, the head of global affairs for AppLovin, hopped on the phone with the Washington Reporter to talk about the investigation and his new civil lawsuit against the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
While traveling to Europe in 2022, Starr, a Jewish American, was arrested on an Interpol warrant requested by the Bonn Public Prosecutor's Office on the allegations that EDF Communications LLC did not pay value-added taxes (VAT) for five years, from October 10, 2015 to May 31, 2020. The entrepreneur said that when he sold his company just months after acquiring it and that he “did an in-person closing with the law firm Venable, like you do with any company in the United States.”
Starr said that “baked into the purchase price of the sale” was that the buyer of his firm covered “all past and future tax liabilities.” He also noted that, over the course of the ordeal, he hasn’t had a single interview with the prosecutor or had access to his investigation file.
Starr, the only passenger of his private plane, said that after he landed in Paris, his aircraft was surrounded by “heavily-armed troops” and he was violently arrested before being placed in a barren Parisian prison, the only furniture being a metal bench and hole in the ground.
The tech mogul asked the authorities when he could find out what he was being charged with, which the agents said they did not know and that their job was to take him to jail, which Starr described as “something out of Locked Up Abroad.” Starr told the Reporter that he was then removed from his cell and was told to open his cell phone to investigators while asking for an attorney, initially refusing but eventually relenting under the threat of French law carrying a two-year prison sentence for not opening one’s phone on demand to the government.
After relinquishing his phone, Starr was made to open up his banking software. He was then given his bail of “€2 million cash, no bond.”
Even after paying the seven-figure bond, the German prosecutor sought to extradite Starr to Germany, where he was facing 15 years in prison. Not allowing that to happen, Starr fought extradition over the course of three months in Paris while his father was dying of terminal cancer, who subsequently passed away without Starr being able to see him.
The tech mogul also said that when he produced the documentation for his sale of the company, the prosecutor “refused to believe” the Venable documents were real, which required the attorneys for the firm to give notarized statements to the prosecutor. Even after that, the prosecutor didn’t believe it.
“It turned out that my lawyers turned out to be the same lawyers for Deutsche Bank,” Starr said. “... Then we hired the author of the German tax code, which this prosecutor was trying to use against me.”
“And it turns out that my company didn’t even owe the VAT tax, which is what this is all about anyway,” he continued. “We gave the prosecutor that from the actual person who crafted the German tax law, like a 99-year-old guy, and he said, ‘You’re reading the tax law wrong. You’re applying it wrong. Daniel’s company never collected it directly.’”
Starr said the prosecutor “refused to believe the author of the German tax code” and, instead, called the tech mogul “the equivalent of a drug addicted criminal committing violent crimes in Bonn, which is beyond me how he’s able to say something like that.”
“But he did, and I’m not sure where he gets that comparison, but all he knows is that I’m a wealthy, successful Jewish dude from California,” Starr added.
Starr said that three years after his arrest, the German prosecutor is continuing to leave his investigation open even though the company has been closed for several years and there’s “been no new news.” Starr explained that it is “very easy for a German prosecutor to get a European arrest warrant issued” and that the warrants are “just kind of signed but they're not even looked at by judges.” This means that the prosecutor can track Starr’s passport and see whenever he leaves America, have him arrested, and attempt to extradite him to Germany again.
Since then, Starr has stayed stateside and has made several requests to close the investigation, but to no avail. He told the Reporter that the investigation has put a damper on his business ventures, including with AppLovin’s push to acquire the currently Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok.
Starr has reached out to individuals at the State Department and U.S. Eembassy in Germany, who he said are “doing their best” with the situation.
Starr also noted that the German prosecutor has been noted in the European nation’s media as being “a rogue prosecutor.” He added that it is “ridiculous” that Germany, with “one of the oldest, most sophisticated legal systems” in the world, “allows this to happen.”
Starr’s case has been a topic of discussion both on Capitol Hill and among Trump administration officials who have raised concerns about whether an American businessman is being unfairly treated by an ally that relies on the U.S. for support.
“We expect to see these cases in Turkey or Pakistan, but not from a western ally like Germany,” a senior congressional official told the Reporter. “Germany’s handling is downright Kafkaesque, and it may cause elected officials to evaluate whether our close relationship with Germany — a country that relies on U.S. defense spending as a deterrent.”
“The German Embassy is aware of the case,” a German official told the Reporter. “We kindly ask for your understanding that we don’t comment single cases or ongoing legal proceedings."
The Reporter reached out to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R., S.C.) office for comment, as well as the German Embassy.
The State Department declined to comment, citing ongoing legal matters.
The plight faced by Starr is one he warned that someone without his means “would look a lot worse” in the same situation. He added that he hears “a lot of people complaining about America” and that it “really upsets” him because, while the U.S. isn’t perfect, “we’re just about as good as it gets on this Earth.”
“I think what it says,” Starr said about the contrast between America’s and Germany’s legal systems, “that if you’re an American business person, if you’re an American citizen, and you’re traveling abroad with specific regard to Germany, or really any place in the EU, you should be aware that German prosecutors and German judges are willing to sign European arrest warrants which apply to anywhere in the EU and also any country that has a treaty with the EU, which is pretty much the whole world, and that they can get a baseless warrant, detain you, and hold you for years and years and years with no proof of any crime whatsoever like they did to me.”
“And I think that’s very dangerous. That doesn’t happen in America,” he continued. “In America, there needs to be very meaningful proof for a judge to sign a warrant for your arrest. There, not at all.”
“I think you should think about how you do business, where you do business. I think for all those people who complain about the American justice system, look at my case and compare that to America and then tell me the American justice system is bad,” he concluded.