Tycoon who made billions from the world’s most famous pistol

He is the man behind the world’s most famous pistol, but few people have heard of Gaston Glock. 

Yet the billionaire would not be out of place in a James Bond film or a John le Carré novel. 

His is a rags-to-riches story featuring a bitter family feud, strippers, a brutal assassination attempt and guns – lots of guns.

The Austrian businessman celebrated his 90th birthday on Friday with a lavish, star-studded party organised by his glamorous second wife, Kathrin, who is 51 years his junior. 

But noticeably absent were his three children and his first wife, Helga, who all helped him build his £1.8 billion empire.

For decades, the Glock business had been a family affair but after Herr Glock suffered a stroke in 2008, he dumped his family for his nurse, Kathrin Tschikof, who at 38 is 19 years younger than his daughter, Brigitte.

‘I don’t know my father any more,’ said Glock’s youngest son, Robert, after the split. 

‘The family was always the most important thing for him… He was absolutely fine until he had his stroke. After that we lost him.’

Gaston Glock’s relationship with Kathrin – and their extravagant parties – has come as a surprise to those who remember a man who was once a near-recluse as he amassed his incredible fortune. 

Before his stroke, Glock travelled in his own jet because, as he once explained, ‘there are fewer crazy people in the air’.

One can hardly blame him for being cautious, given that his trusted right-hand man and financial adviser, Charles Ewert, plotted to have him killed in 1999.

The Glock semi-automatic pistol took the world by storm and within a decade had become the favoured sidearm for Nato, the FBI, most of the US police – and gun-toting gangsters. A 9mm pistol is pictured above in a stock photo [File photo]

Ewert lured his boss to a dimly lit underground car park in Luxembourg to admire his sports car, but fled when a masked hitman rained down blows on the billionaire’s head with a rubber mallet.

Amaziungly, Glock, then aged 70 but in great shape thanks to miles of daily swimming, fought back and overpowered his assailant. 

‘I was fighting for my life,’ he later said. He reportedly lost a litre of blood in the attack, but still managed to call his lawyers on the way to hospital to cut off Ewert’s access to the family’s bank accounts.

It emerged that Ewert hatched the plot because he feared Glock would discover he had siphoned off £100 million from the business. Ewert was jailed for 20 years and the hitman, Jacques Pecheur, for 17.

The betrayal shook a man whose few friends were said to include the late Pope John Paul II and far-Right politician Jorg Haider, a former leader of Austria’s Freedom Party who died in a car crash in 2008.

Glock was certainly not known to mix with Hollywood celebrities before he married Kathrin in 2011. 

Since then, however, she has thrown glitzy parties for her husband at his lakefront mansion in Velden, Austria, and at a nearby state-of-the- art equestrian centre that Glock had built for his new wife.

It is a world away from Glock’s humble upbringing in Vienna, where his father worked on the railways and his mother had a job with the trams service.

After school, Glock joined a car radiator factory, rising to operations manager as he saved up to buy a home with Helga Unterreiner, a German secretary from a prosperous family in Bavaria, Germany, whom he had met while on holiday in Velden in 1958. ‘He had eyes only for me,’ she would later recall.

The couple married in 1962 and Glock launched his own metalworks factory, which initially made curtain rails and then widened to include knives and plastic casings for grenades for the Austrian military.

Progress was steady for the couple and their three young children, Brigitte, Gaston Jr and Robert, but became meteoric after he chatted with two Austrian army colonels at a dinner party in 1980. Glock eavesdropped as they discussed the urgent need for a new handgun to replace the antiquated revolver used by troops.

They scoffed when Glock interrupted to say he could help but eventually agreed to join him for dinner where, after a schnitzel cooked by Helga, the colonels sketched out the design on a napkin of the gun they wanted.

Glock set to work, producing a plastic-moulded weapon that was lighter, more reliable and capable of holding more bullets.

The Glock semi-automatic pistol took the world by storm and within a decade had become the favoured sidearm for Nato, the FBI, most of the US police – and gun-toting gangsters. Since 1982, more than five million have been sold – almost a third in the US – bringing its maker an estimated £1.8 billion fortune.

With business booming, the Glock family moved from their home on the outskirts of Vienna to a stunning mansion overlooking Lake Worthersee in southern Austria. 

Glock also began spending more time in America, where his family would sometimes accompany him to the annual SHOT (Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade) show in Las Vegas that his firm sponsored.

They knew nothing, however, of the Gold Club in Atlanta, an exclusive strip joint where Glock executives allegedly entertained police gun-procurement officials. Glock rubbished such corruption claims as fantasies dreamt up by disgruntled former employees.

But one lawsuit proved more problematic – a $500 million claim filed by his wife Helga after Glock left her for Kathrin and fired the family from their jobs at the company.

Gaston Glock’s relationship with Kathrin (pictured above) – and their extravagant parties – has come as a surprise to those who remember a man who was once a near-recluse as he amassed his incredible fortune

Helga launched a civil case in the US, claiming they were improperly treated by her ex-husband’s advisers after his stroke. She also said she was denied access to Glock’s hospital room, where Kathrin nursed him, and locked out of the family mansion without her personal belongings.

She also alleged that Glock had a personal slush fund he used to ‘cavort with women around the world’. One sham corporation was said to be for the sole purpose of owning homes ‘to house and entertain’ his lovers.

Perhaps most hurtful of all, she said Glock cancelled a trust fund for his children but spent £9 million on a champion showjumping horse as a gift to Kathrin.

Glock, who denied Helga’s claims, said they had lived separate lives for years and managed to get her lawsuit dismissed last year. Now, while he rubs shoulders with celebrities, his daughter runs a pet shop, Gaston Jr has a clothing business and Robert owns a restaurant chain.

Glock spends much of his time in his fortress-like mansion in Velden where, despite the stunning views, he prefers a basement room from where he can oversee all aspects of the property from a Bond villain-esque control panel.

But rather than a sense of control, critics liken his behaviour to the ‘senseless and self-destructive rage’ of Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear, who disowns his loyal daughter in favour of flatterers. 

As Helga’s lawyer put it in US court papers: ‘Perhaps neither pathology nor psychology can provide a satisfactory explanation for why an ageing billionaire would spend his twilight years seeking to terrorise members of his own family.’