[7][8] At the age of 14, Windhorst, the son of a local stationery store owner, turned the family garage in his hometown of Rahden into a makeshift computer lab.
Dubbed the "Wunderkind" and Germany's Bill Gates, he was invited to join the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on a trip to Asia as part of the official government delegation.
[17][18] In 2004, Windhorst became co-founder of the Sapinda investment group, which coordinates financing with its affiliate, Anoa Capital, to provide funding to public, private and start-up companies.
[7] As a result of the global financial crisis in 2008, during the latter half of the year the company started restructuring talks; in January 2009 the partners had to file for bankruptcy for the German subsidiary Vatas.
[6] Sapinda Holding BV combines investments in agriculture and food processing with mining/raw materials, oil and gas extraction and production, in both public and private companies.
[25] Together with Carl Heinrich Bruhn, Lars Windhorst set up Amatheon Agri to give Sapinda Holding BV exposure to the African agricultural sector, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.
[26] In an interview, Windhorst stated the Sapinda business organised investments amounting to around €3.5 billion between 2009 and 2012, including loans for companies like Air Berlin and Infineon.
[6][29] The Public Prosecutor in Berlin pressed charges against Windhorst for fraud, breach of trust, embezzlement and several counts of insolvency offences in 2009.
[33][24] In 2010, Windhorst also faced a civil suit by Alki Partners, an American hedge fund, which filed papers in a Manhattan court alleging that he and others took part in a "fraudulent scheme" to "manipulate" the share price of Remote DX, a US company.
[44] In September 2022 the Financial Times revealed that Windhorst had commissioned Israeli private intelligence company Shibumi Strategy to orchestrate a campaign against Hertha’s then-president Werner Gegenbauer.