The legal fight for control of Glock after Gaston & Helga’s nasty divorce has taken an interesting turn. By using US law, Helga Glock has secured access to over 500,000 documents that were originally disclosed in their Austrian divorce and allows them to be used in her RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) lawsuit. Helga claims Gaston cheated her out of $500 million and her ownership of the company.

Considering the multitude of other lawsuits pending on the company and their similar charges of corruption, the documents may provide plenty of “ammunition” for Helga and the Glock children to win the company from its founder, their father. The litigation will take years to ultimately resolve.

From Bloomberg:

Helga Glock gained access to a huge store of fresh ammunition for her U.S. civil racketeering suit against her ex-husband, Austrian pistol magnate Gaston Glock. A federal appeals court in Atlanta ruled on Monday that in pursuing the racketeering action, Helga may use confidential gun company documents her lawyers obtained in connection with divorce proceedings in Austria.

The intra-family legal feud, part of a broader struggle for control of the globally famous Glock firearm empire, has generated a storm of litigation in the U.S. and Austria. In one suit filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), Helga, 79, has accused her 86-year-old industrialist ex-spouse of concealing hundreds of millions of dollars in gun profits that are rightfully hers, while also tricking her out of a substantial equity stake in Glock GmbH, the Austrian parent company.

Gaston Glock has vehemently denied these allegations, which he portrays as little more than an elaborate shakedown scheme engineered by his embittered former wife and their three adult children.

 In an 18-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said that Mrs. Glock’s attorneys may use voluminous records obtained from Glock Inc., the manufacturer’s U.S. unit, even though the documents were disclosed as part of separate divorce proceedings in Austria. “Today’s decision puts an end to a bizarre legal predicament whereby Mrs. Glock possessed 500,000 pages of documents that are directly relevant to the RICO action but could not share them with her RICO counsel,” John Da Grosa Smith, Helga Glock’s lead U.S. attorney, said via e-mail. A lawyer in Atlanta for Gaston Glock did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.