Curt Engelhorn sold Boehringer Mannheim to Roche with no German tax paid, two of his daughters were arrested, and the family settled for €135 million to €145 million

Curt Engelhorn, a great-grandson of BASF founder Friedrich Engelhorn, ran Boehringer Mannheim from the late 1950s and moved its holding company, Corange, to Bermuda in the 1980s. In 1997 the family sold Boehringer Mannheim to Hoffmann-La Roche for almost 19 billion Deutsche Mark. Der Spiegel reported that no German tax was paid on the sale. Years later a tax CD bought by North Rhine-Westphalia carried Engelhorn family data. In October 2013 two of his children and their tax lawyer were arrested in Munich and Hamburg and held for nine days. Augsburg prosecutors suspected that Engelhorn paid millions a year to his children in Bavaria through a network of companies, including a stud farm costing about €2 million a year. In January 2016 the case ended in a deal. His two youngest daughters accepted tax damage of €135 million to €145 million and penal orders of €2.16 million each. No charge against Curt was reported. The daughters moved to Switzerland and took Swiss citizenship. Curt died on 13 October 2016, aged 90. His will left most of an estate estimated at 3.5 billion Swiss francs to his widow in Gstaad. Each child was to receive about €20 million, after lifetime gifts reported at about €450 million each. A daughter from his first marriage contested the will in the regional court of the Bernese Oberland. By 2021 court costs exceeded 4 million francs. No ruling has been reported.