http://www.polizei.bayern.de/fahndung/personen/straftaeter/bekannt/index.html/7013For English version, click on British flag.
This is the official info provided by Munich police.
Further info from April this year:
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/0,1518,477230,00.html/701314. April 2007
"Sexual abuse of children in dozens of cases - suspect guru gone underground in Spain
The man is being looked for by the police since years, for being the alleged head of a sect founded in Bavaria; he is accused of sexual harassment of children in about 1,000 cases. The track leads to Spain now.
Madrid/Munich - Police accuses him of having harassed 116 children. Investigations have been going on for years, and tracks to the 58-year-old man born in Hamburg now point to the province of Galicia in the Northwest of Spain, according to Spanish paper "El Pais". The suspect is said to have got known as an esoteric musician and founded a sect in Bavaria during the 1980ies which is accused of about 1,000 cases of sexual harassment of children.
Munich D.A. confirmed that the man is being looked after for several years now. If he gets found in Spain, they will apply to have him extradited, said D.A. Anton Winkler. The suspect had his last place of residence in the vicinity of Munich.
According to "El Pais", the alleged guru first stayed on a hacienda in the town of Vila Nova de Cerveira in the North of Portugal after making an escape from Germany with his followers.
He is now reported to have been seen in the neighbouring Galician provinces of Pontevedra and Vigo. Witnesses say the saw him on the beach in attempts to make further followers. There were also information claiming the 58-year-old man is living on a boat passing between Spain and Portugal on the river Mino.
He is also reported to have been seen in pubs on the island of Ibiza.
asc/dpa"
The following is an interview with the father of one of the children. The father apparently belonged to the followership of Shanti/Schulz for years, and his report of how Shanti/Schulz treated the musicians playing the music sold under the name of Shanti is very interesting. If this report is based on facts, Shanti/Schulz is in fact an exploiter of indigenous cultures and musicians, and this should merit him being moved to the Fraud section.
http://www.spuren.ch/archiv/archiv_comments/113_0_50_0_C/SPUREN (=traces) Archiv
Issue No 68 summer 2003
"Oliver Shame?
Since autumn 2002, Oliver Shanti is to be seen on international warrants and is on the run. German authorities accuse him of 1,000 incidents of sexual harassment. Is it possible to create such beautiful music and molest children at the same time? SPUREN talked to one of the effected persons.
By Claude Jaermann
The name Oliver Shanti & Friends is a symbol for the merging of meditative music and ethno sounds. Sales of CDs like "Tai Chi", "Well Balanced" or "Alhambra" were well above 100,000. Oliver Shanti touched many people, however as Ulrich Schulz, his original name, he apparently also touched boys under age. Since autumn 2002, Oliver Shanti is on the run and his name is on international lists. German authorities accuse him of 1,000 incidents of sexual harassment. Did Paulus become a Saulus? Is it possible to create such
beautiful music and molest children at the same time? SPUREN talked to a person directly affected whose son went to school at Oliver Shanti's hacienda in Portugal and was molested by him for several years.
Q: Who is Oliver Shanti for you today?
A: A person who went astray from the ideals he stood for in former years and abused them for his purposes. I am very much affected by what happened to the children. The reports of fraud, involving different amounts of money, are secondary here. Oliver Shanti to me is a traitor of the ideals I still believe in.
Q: When did you stop calling him a friend?
A: That was in summer 2001 when I was absolutely certain that the harassment my son accused him of really did happen, although Oliver Shanti always denied. Even to my face he swore an oath to the Indian saint Anandamayi Ma that these accusations were false.
I talked to my son again who confirmed all incidents. The next day I phoned Oliver Shanti who was living in Portugal and told him I would stop working for him this very minute. He just said I was old enough and should know...
Q: Did you already know then there would be legal action?
A: I was the one to start legal procedings. It was important to me that the children were to decide whether this was reported to the police or not. They came to a decision very quickly and decided upon reporting Oliver Shanti. They did not do this for a revenge, but to precent Oliver Shanti from doing this to other children.
In February 2002, investigations started and witnesses were being questioned. Oliver Shanti permanently stayed in Portugal at this time and refused to comment the accusations. He avoided arrest and went underground.
Q: Did you ever have doubts?
A: No. Quite the contrary. It got more and more evident afterwards. According to investigations, authorities now assume there were about 1,000 incidents in which 10 children have been molested during the last ten years. My son got molested from the age of 11 until the age of 17.
Q: How did Oliver Shanti manage to have children put in his care?
A: We were a circle of friends and families. Since my wife and I lived in Berlin, we thought it was wonderful for our son to have the opportunity to grow up on a beautiful hacienda and go to school there. There was one of the mothers there in Portugal all of the time. My former wife also went down during university breaks. We planned to live at the hacienda in our old age.
Q: Oliver Shanti never composed anything himself nor did he play instruments. So what was his role in this community?
A: He did not invent the combination of meditative music and ethno sounds, but he meant to extend the fusion. He came to the studio in the end, and decided what to publish. In the beginning, there was just improvising in a meditative mood. In former years, he sang Indian songs he had learned. But all in all he was not present in the studio that often. The band consisted of four main musicians who did all the work. Since he did not want young musicians to simply leave when they had success, Oliver Shanti had his name put down as the compser, arranger, and producer. This meant he also got all the royalties.
The person doing most was a woman who worked for the label Sattva and who later on was cheated out of her money. There also was an agreement with a Tibetan organisation to give them DM 1 for every copy of "Tai Chi" sold which was never kept. "Tai-Chi" sold more than 300,000 copies, and the Tibetans never saw as much as DM 1.
Q: Why did this person receive so much trust?
A: He always said: Look, it's a new time now. Star cult and jumping abut on stange is over and done with. Oliver Shanti, he said, was more of a working title. It was not the individual that counted, but the message. That's why he also never gave intervirews.
He belonged to the generation of 69, had his own ashram in India, then came back to Germany and meant to get something moved with art and culture. [..] He questioned the system, was active in the peace movement, engaged for Amnesty International.
Q: Did you ignore warning signals? Were there any?
A: A warning signal should have been his excess in collecting parrots. He had between 300 and 400 parrots in Portugal, bought them from traders out of compassion. He also joined several associations for birds, and for taking them back into the wilderness, and justified this with the claim of trying to protect endangered species. He invested much money into the parrots - more than was our aim. We intended to built the studio in Portugal, and appartment houses in which the musicians were to live. He hired two persons to look after the parrots. The entire parrot project took more than EURO 1 million.
Q: These were warning signals about finances. Were there others?
A: Yes. He got more and more impatient with people and got harder, more demanding towards them. Even with musicians working for him.
Q: Did the musicians profit from Oliver Shanti?
A: Those who went did not. Everything was owned by the community. Those who went couldn't take anything with them.
Q: Was there any criticism of him?
A: Not at all. This only changed when the woman heading Sattva made claims when Oliver Shanti meant to found a joint-stock company which eventually came into being. He always pretended he sought to come to terms with her, but every time it got down to brass tacks, he always denied an agreement. He almost managed to completely isolate her, aggravating her so often until she revolted in the end.
Q: This sounds like a somewhat demonic intelligence at work here?
A: In hindsight, yes. Looking at things under the aspect of divine and demonic inclinations, I see him more on the demonic side today.
Q: How can someone 'so bad' create such 'beautiful' music?
A: You shouldn't project the music at him alone. There always were super musicians who put their soul into the music.
Oliver Shanti also was a generous person who bought five ambulances for the village in Portugal, and who never passed a beggar without giving him some money. But today I can imagine he did this on purpose to buy connections.
The name of the person is known to the editors but withheld for personal reasons."
I just realized that this interview is the same as in the second link provided by Ganieda. Having read the version put up at earth-rhythms.com, I see several differences between their translation and the German original, especially regarding the role of the person running the Sattva company who gets depicted unfavourably in the e-r version. I also did not translate the second part of the article, a statement in which the author M.F. took great pains in describing 'they' never really liked to review Shanti's records. Although on a personal level I share his view of Shanti's music being shallow, his claim, made in hindsight, may have been made in order to prevent further damage for having promoted Shanti's music. Shanti to this day is popular with many people, his CDs can be obtained through amazon and is auctioned at e-bay, and I found several entries in German language forums written by persons who refuse to believe the accusations of sexual molesting children. The way musicians were treated and royalties cashed in by O.S. never get criticized....
