Top Gun
Dyan Machan, 03.31.03
Inside the secret and violent world of Gaston Glock, maker of the most popular firearm in U.S. law enforcement.
He is the man behind the gun. You don't mess with Gaston Glock. His most trusted associate tried. Lured into a dimly lit garage in Luxembourg by his colleague Charles Ewert, the Austrian Glock stopped to look at a sports car at Ewert's suggestion. Suddenly, a massive masked man leaped from behind and smashed a rubber mallet into Glock's skull. Ewert fled to the stairwell. "I am a coward," he later told . With Glock off balance, the attacker landed another crushing blow. "I was fighting for my life," recalls Glock, 73, during a rare interview with the press.
Springing up on legs toned by miles of daily swimming, Glock thrust his enormous fist into his assailant's eye socket. As the would-be assassin staggered, Glock pounded again, knocking out a few of the man's teeth. The bloodied attacker staggered, then collapsed on top of Glock "with his arms outstretched like Jesus," according to John Paul Frising, Luxembourg's deputy attorney general, who brought attempted murder charges against the attacker, the French-born Jacques (Spartacus) Pêcheur, 67. This was how the police found the two men at 9:30 a.m. on July 27, 1999.
Glock says he lost a liter of blood from cuts and abrasions and that he suffered seven head wounds. Yet as soon as he reached the hospital he summoned his personal bankers at UBS and Banque Ferrier Lullin. The banks held $70 million in cash, and Ewert had access to it all. By 12:30 p.m. Glock managed to move $40 million to a Swiss account. But by then Ewert had blocked the other $30 million with a court order. As he nursed his injuries, Glock wondered how he could have trusted the wrong man.
On Mar. 12 Ewert and Pêcheur were both found guilty of attempted murder following a three-week, nonjury trial in Luxembourg. Ewert received 20 years--the maximum punishment currently available. Pêcheur received 17 years for his role as the would-be assassin. The normally gregarious Ewert barely reacted at all, sitting motionless when the verdict was read. Pêcheur sighed and lowered his head. "It is a good day," said a pleased Glock who himself is constitutionally disinclined toward emotional displays. Yet Glock added ominously, "It is one step in a war," referring to future charges that may be brought against his former colleague and friend. Both Pêcheur and Ewert plan to appeal.
To appreciate the magnitude of this betrayal, consider that the relationship between the two men had been close and was a factor in the success of Glock GmbH. Ewert, a business consultant who once worked for the Luxembourg stock exchange, worked with Glock for 15 years as Glock's little-known gun became the sidearm of choice for U.S. law enforcement.
The U.S. police business was once dominated by Smith & Wesson and Beretta. Then in 1985 along came Glock with a gun made from a nylon resin that was tough enough to be made into most parts of a pistol (except the carbon steel barrel). The Glock was also revolutionary for its simple design--34 parts, compared with 60 or so for the Smith & Wesson .45 caliber semiautomatic--and its 24-ounce weight, to 25.4 ounces for the Smith & Wesson. A Glock shooter experiences a softer recoil because the gun's polymer frame flexes slightly when it's fired. Glock fans include the New York City police, U.S. Special Forces, the FBI and many international antiterrorist units.
These days Glock GmbH has an estimated $100 million in sales, two-thirds of it from the trigger-happy United States. A gun that retails for $500 can be manufactured for $75, and the company has a pretax margin nearing 60%, estimates John Farnam of Defense Training International, a LaPorte, Colorado, small arms instructor.
Success hasn't made Glock, a highly secretive man, any more trusting of the people around him. He has a few high-profile friends. Among them: Pope John Paul II and Jörg Haider, former leader of Austria's ultraright Freedom Party and a Hitler admirer. At his lakefront mansion in Velden, Austria, Glock's favorite room is in the basement, where he can control his home's inner workings, including the temperature of the tiles in his upstairs bathroom. He flies his own Cessna Citation jet wherever he travels. "There are fewer crazy people in the air," he says.
From his headquarters in Deutsch-Wagram, near Vienna, Glock has run through seven U.S. sales managers in 11 years. Last month his top lieutenant in the U.S., Paul Jannuzzo, a tightly wound former New Jersey prosecutor and 12-year veteran of the company, resigned as general counsel and chief operating officer. "Jannuzzo went crazy," says Glock, without further explanation. (A source close to the company says Jannuzzo was frustrated and had tried to quit before.) Jannuzzo, 46, and Glock clashed and agreed to part ways after the annual Shot Show gun convention in Orlando, Florida, last month. Glock had hoped to retain Jannuzzo as his general counsel while assigning the operational duties to another employee. Jannuzzo will remain Glock's outside counsel and declines to comment on the situation, though he earlier told FORBES GLOBAL, "Mr. Glock does not shy away from a fight."
He should know. Jannuzzo spearheaded Glock's efforts to kill the Clinton Administration's voluntary gun-control effort in 2000--it was that or face a multitude of tobacco-like government-sponsored lawsuits. "Extortionist," is how Glock refers to the measures that would have introduced an oversight committee, as well as restrict how guns are sold. (The company's obstinacy resulted in 28 liability suits filed by municipalities claiming that Glock is responsible for murders committed with its weapons; 11 suits remain.) Jannuzzo also led a successful patent infringement suit against Smith & Wesson, which created a gun that looked a lot like a Glock--"I felt like my wallet was stolen," Glock hisses--and resulted in an undisclosed multimillion-dollar settlement. And Jannuzzo acted as pit bull in notifying 12 record labels that the company objects to artists using the word "Glock" in rap songs such as Dr. Dre's "*****es Ain't ****," mainly out of fear that Glock's name will become a generic term for handgun.
