Christina Block

There's something we should worry about is the implication.

Hanning and a retired official from the Hamburg State Criminal Police Office are suspected of having accepted a contract from Block, that's Christina Block, in 2022 to abduct her children while serving as executives of a security firm.

So the plan was, hey, we're a part of a security team and now we're going to abduct the children to get them away from her husband as part of this custody battle.

That's a weird set of circumstances.

But tell us who, who else was he working for in retirement? Any other clients that raised eyebrows?

Um, well, most prominently, we believe also they were family friends, the Block family.

So this is a family that runs a steakhouse dynasty.

So they have-

Yeah.

[laughs]

... on every German high street you will see a Block restaurant.

[upbeat music] Here in the Dorotheenstraße begun this.

What initially sounds unconnected will become part of a greater whole soon enough.

So now we turn our attention to the Christina Block case.

Christina Block is a successful businesswoman from Hamburg.

She was born in 1973 and she succeeded millionaire businessman Eugen Block in 2011 in running his business empire together with her two brothers.

Eugen Block founded the very successful German steakhouse chain.

And Eugen Block also owns several breweries and a number of very, very upscale hotels.

When Eugen Block retired, his daughter and her brothers took over the business.

From 2005 to 2018, Christina Block was married to Stefan Hanse.

So how this whole thing came to light was, somehow, a child custody battle involving a steakhouse fortune.

Christina Block is the daughter of Eugene Block, who founded Blockhaus, one of Germany's best-known steakhouse chains.

She was married to Stefan Hensel.

They divorced in 2018 and they have four children together, and for years they've been locked in a bitter custody fight over the two youngest, a girl and a boy.

Hensel was beaten and the two children, then aged 13 and 10, were dragged into a car and driven to Germany.

Within a couple of days, they were with their mother.

In July 2025, Christina Block went on trial in Hamburg with six others accused of commissioning the abduction.

Block denies all of it.

But anyways, this guy, though, I guess being the boss, you can probably kind of Xerox whatever you want and wander out the door with it, which he appears to have done.

Further along that, though, so where the kind of this guy's connection to Israel comes in is the idea that there was some woman, a Christina Block, if I am remembering the name correctly, Christina Block heir to a steakhouse empire.

I mean, that's just that's just an attractive prospect.

Steakhouse empire.

I can basically do whatever the fuck I want.

It's the shit.

But this woman, Christina Block, steakhouse empire, it appears that she is from Deutschland, Deutschland, and this dude that she had married, as I'm deriving this, was from, or is from, Denmark.

And they are getting divorced, and they've got these two kids, and this dude...

I wonder if Epstein's gonna make his way into this conversation.

Hanning came under scrutiny in a separate investigation into the abduction of Hamburg H- H- Hamburg businesswoman Christina Block's children from her ex-husband in Denmark in January 2024 in a custody battle that had been going on for several years.

Oh, never mind.

An inve- the investigation into that case led to Tuesday's arrests.

'Cause I believe if it were Russia or China or Iran, we'd already know.

Yeah.

There was a lot of good information about Christina Block that you already just read there.

Um, uh, Christina Block is on trial in Hamburg for allegedly hiring an Israeli security firm to do the kidnapping, a- kidnapping you mentioned after a long custody fight.

It's because of a steakhouse heiress investigation.

So, uh, it, this, this steakhouse heiress called Christina Block, and Block House, I've been reading about this, Block House is a, a big restaurant chain in Germany, and it's family-friendly steakhouses where you can get a classic, a classic Block burger and a filet mignon.

So it's kind of upmarket, but steaks, burgers, and the like.

Anyway, so she is the heiress to the Block family fortune, and she, Christina Block, has been in this bitter custody battle with her ex-husband, Steven Hetzel, and she has been trying to get the children, and they've been battling over it.

And so the claim is that at New Year's Eve 2023, she contracts a group to ambush her ex-husband, I mean, this is how mad this is, and their two youngest children, who are t- then 10 and 13, in southern Denmark, close to the German border.

And at New Year's Eve, they're watching a fireworks display.

And then the, the kids are eventually handed over to the police, 'cause they must realize what's going on, and are then taken back to Denmark a few days later.

So, I mean, that's the kind of weird heiress custody battle.