This interview was posted April 16, 2015 on youtube. Lorenz Reibling's replies to the reporter in Argentina are in English.
Lorenz Reibling is intimately connected to the Watchtower Society and, according to some sources, is a JW himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3SSA-9YVII
So who is Lorenz Reibling?
There have been a few threads on this forum in the past that have discussed Reibling and his connections to the Watchtower and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/121916/lorenz-reibling-knocking-wts?page=1&size=20
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/133334/knocking-forum?size=20&page=1
A 2007 conversation on YahooGroups had this to say about Lorenz Reibling:
Knocking - Funding, Doctrine, and Hypocrisy
A Common Bond's Response to the Documentary Knocking - part 2Where the Money Came From
On May 22, 2007, a documentary program entitled Knocking was shown on
some Public Broadcasting System (PBS) stations throughout the United
States as a part of their "Independent Lens" series of programs. Because
PBS does not accept commercial advertisements, programming on this
network is paid for through grants from various corporate sources, public
and private foundations, and individual funding. Programming on PBS
always discloses the sources of funding for it's shows at the time of the
program's airing, as well as on the PBS website. An examination of the
PBS website lists the following as providing major funding for Knocking:
Walter Zaremba
Gunther Reibling
New York Community Trust
A further examination of the Knocking website shows the following list of
supporters at the bottom of each page:
Independent Television Service
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Reibling Foundation
Note the name "Reibling" on both sites as a major contributor for the
production of this program. A quick search on the internet found a
connection between Gunther Reibling, the Reibling Foundation, and the
Watchtower Bible & Tract Society on the Boston College website. Further
research reveals the establishment of the Laura and Lorenz Reibling
Family Foundation of Boston, Massachusetts as a charitable organization
some time after Knocking had been funded. According to the website of
Taurus Investment Holdings, Lorenz Reibling is the brother of Gunther
Reibling. Unconfirmed sources we consider trusted and reliable believe
both Reibling brothers to be practicing Jehovah's Witnesses. Whether or
not this is true, the Reibling family does associate with people who have
close ties to the Watchtower. An online bio of Lorenz Reibling states the
following:
Lorenz Reibling, Chairman, Taurus Investment Holdings
Lorenz is Chairman and a principal of Taurus Investment Holdings, LLC. As
cofounder of Taurus, Lorenz has been responsible for the acquisition
and/or development of over 100 commercial real estate projects throughout
the United States since 1976. He regularly participates as co-investor in
Taurus-sponsored real estate transactions.
In 1966, Lorenz completed an apprenticeship as Industriekaufmann at
Obpacher AG, a Weyerhauser-affiliated, Munich-based printing and
publishing plant. Lorenz subsequently graduated from Munchen-Kolleg and
attended Technische Universitat and Ludwigs-Maximilians Universitat,
earning degrees in Cybernetics and Psychology. His early research on
personality changes in heart transplant patients was conducted at
University Hospital Munich Grosshadern. After immigration to America he
received a MS from Boston College in Organizational Management with focus
on maximizing intellectual capital. He has attended and completed
specialized courses at MIT and Harvard on real estate related subjects.
Mr. Reibling's early career included employment with multinational
corporations such as Hoechst (Cassella Riedl), American Hospital Supply
Corporation, and CPI Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. specializing in
sophisticated cardiac stimulation appliances.
Mr. Reibling is a full member of the AHI Angel Healthcare Investor Group,
The Massachusetts Historical Society, Friends of the Kunstakademie
Munchen, and supporter of numerous philantropic organizations. He was
appointed to the advisory board of MIT/CRE (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology/Center for Real Estate).
As a collector of 15th-16th century Bibles and Reformation literature,
Mr. Reibling has initiated and co-sponsored significant research and
exhibition projects, such as "The Art of the Book: A journey through a
Thousand Years" and "Confront: Resistance against Nazi Terror." He is
fluent in German, English, Spanish and Italian. His residency is in the
United States with homes in Massachusetts and Florida. He is married for
26 years with three adult children.
It is startling to note that Lorenz Reibling conducted research on
"personality transplants" at around the same time that the Watchtower was
teaching that organ transplantation was a disfellowshippable offense due
to it's being considered cannibalism and a risk for the patient taking on
the personality of the donor. Some time later, the Watchtower lifted the
restriction against organ transplants, but failed to invite back the
disfellowshipped members who had "sinned" by having life-saving surgery,
but "went ahead of Jehovah" by doing so before the ban was lifted.
Another way to trace the Reiblings' association with the Watchtower is by
doing an internet search on the other name that appears on the PBS
website as a provider of major funding: Walter Zaremba.
A search on the internet revealed the docket of a federal court case:
BIELERT v. NORTHERN OHIO PROPERTIES [No. 87-4031, 1988 WL 125357, at *5
(6th Cir. 1988)] was a 1988 federal lawsuit in which David Bielert
alleged that he suffered employment discrimination, in violation of Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because he was not a Jehovah's
Witness. Northern Ohio Properties was a subsidiary of Zaremba
Corporation, owned by Tim Zaremba, Walter Zaremba, and other members of
the Zaremba family. The Zaremba family are Jehovah's Witnesses, and many
of the investors and employees of the related corporations are believed
to be Jehovah's Witnesses.
Zaremba is linked to Reibling by a man named Aaron Gibitz who has worked
for both Taurus (Reibling) and Zaremba:
From March 2002 to the present, Mr. Gibitz has been a consultant to
Taurus Investment Group,Inc., based in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Taurus
invest in real estate and has other business interest including health
and wellness consumer products and media/technology. From March 1997
through March 2002, Mr. Gibitz was an executive with Zaremba Management,
based in Independence, Ohio..
Taurus Investments Holdings has been involved in Watchtower real estate deals - they bought the Brooklyn Heights’ Standish Hotel from the Watchtower in 2007, converted it to luxury housing, and recently sold it for $10 million more than they had paid for it.
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2014/06/24/westbrook-partners-paid-60m-for-standish-hotel-records-show/
Westbrook declined to comment, but public records show the company paid $60 million for the 12-story building overlooking the Brooklyn Heights Promenade with views of the city. The Watchtower Society of The Jehovah’s Witnesses sold the building at 169 Columbia Heights for $50 million in 2007 to the Boston-based Taurus Investment Holdings, which converted it into 94 luxury apartment rentals shortly thereafter.
Taurus Investments has been doing well in the past few years - it has grown substantially and is now know as Taurus Global Real Estate Investment, with offices in India, Canada, Germany, Greece, England, Turkey, Argentina, and the United States.