BBC新闻100篇 News Item 48

In Germany, if you think your financial advisor

has been giving you bad advice

and messing up your investments,

you can complain to the regulators,

you can go to the police.

But in Bavaria, one group of pensioners stands accused of

employing a much more direct method

of registering their dissatisfaction.

They're on trial for kidnapping

their financial advisor and holding him hostage.

Four senior citizens, aged between 63 and 79,

had invested nearly three and a half million dollars

in the US property market

and lost it all in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.

They'd concluded that the man who'd handled the investment

should now reimburse them.

According to prosecutors, last summer

the pensioner posse plus one accomplice

abducted the financial advisor outside his house,

tied him, gagged him, put him in a box

and transported him in the boot of a car

450 kilometres to a lakeside retreat.

He claims to spent four days

locked in the cellar there and to have been tortured.

After agreeing to their demands,

the prisoner was allowed to send a fax

to Switzerland arranging payment.

He concealed the phrase

"call the Police" in the text

and the alarm was raised.

Soon after a crack team of commandos came to the rescue.

On the opening day of the trial,

the 74 year old alleged ringleader of the gang

avoided using the word "kidnap".

He said he and his co-defendants

had only wanted to treat their guest

to a couple of days holiday in Bavaria.