Munich - A 46-year-old mother-of-three who is reputed to be Germany's richest woman and has drawn huge publicity in a "gigolo" case has given a rare glimpse of the pressure created by her wealth.

Susanne Klatten, who reported to police in January that a Swiss man romanced her then tried to extort millions of euros from her, has given only one interview about her ordeal. An indictment is expected within weeks.

Klatten set out in the newspaper Financial Times Deutschland how she had striven all her life to avoid being appreciated just for her money by keeping out of the public eye and by living anonymously.

She is a principal shareholder in BMW, the German manufacturer of luxury cars.

In her youth, Susanne Quandt, as she then was, took a minor job at BMW under the pseudonym Susanne Kant and met her future husband Jan Klatten during the incognito work experience.

That makes it all the more extraordinary that such a careful woman should have been taken in by a man who plotted to grab her money and arranged for embarrassing photos to be taken of their trysts.

And that Klatten of all people should make headlines in the European popular press.

Referring to the worldwide news media attention, she said in her first interview, three weeks after the story broke, "It hurts me.

"One has to keep one's distance from it, put protection around oneself. Otherwise I'd be in danger of getting ill."

Helg Sgarbi, 43, the man who allegedly seduced her and other rich women, is in a remand jail near Munich awaiting trial for extortion.

Klatten went to the police when she realized he was playing a trick on her. Munich prosecutors expect to issue an indictment before the end of the year, with a trial likely next spring.

Before the interview, Klatten had only communicated via a staff spokesman who was brief but explicit about what happened. Her remarks suggest that she resolved at the beginning of the year to be frank and not try to put a veil over the reasons for the blackmail attempt.

But she admits that the media furore when the story broke this month was bigger than she had expected, with her face on the covers of magazines. Television talkshows debated how and why it had all happened.

Until the flurry of attention, Klatten was often able to attend public events without too many people recognizing her. Not any more.

The Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) devoted a three-page spread at the end of last week to Klatten's career as a seclusive captain of industry and her sudden celebrity. She not only sits on the board of BMW but also of her chemicals company, Altana.

Her willingness to trust the newspaper was based on the FTD's relationship with UnternehmerTUM, her smallest company, which trains students at the Technical University of Munich in entrepreneurial skills.

Klatten said she had wanted as a young woman to do a degree in garden architecture.

"But I didn't dare to live a life that was all my own," she said. Preparing to take over her father's fortune, she did business studies in Lausanne, Switzerland and in England. Most fellow students had no idea who she was.

"Liberation from a surname," is her term for that kind of incognito.

"I had a fine time," she recalled. "I wish my children can be thought of by their first names only too.

"It is a huge psychological release, which one needs to develop, to get to know one's self."

Her father died when she was 20 and she was given enormous responsibility very early in life. She admitted to the FTD that amid so much duty, she did not always find it easy just to enjoy life, "that opposite of discipline."

"I asked myself if I should enjoy myself. Am I allowed a day off? I have to convince myself to break this sense of duty. Otherwise one comes to grief." Typically, Klatten often says "one" when she means herself.

It may be that the moment she met Sgarbi, reportedly in a holiday hotel in Tyrol, Austria, was one of those instances when she let go.

Sgarbi has been described in news reports as a former Swiss Army officer who speaks six languages.

After she got to know him, he told her a story about having harmed the child of a Mafia family in a road accident and being in danger of mob revenge. She have him a cool 7 million euros (9 million euros) to help.

After their relationship ended, he began sending her threatening letters demanding more money.

"How could such a thing happen?" she asked in the interview, and answered, "It always hurts me to be judged in terms of money. Money is not the measure of who I am. It draws a curtain in front of me that hides me.

"But I want to be seen - as a person. That is how an urge to communicate, which is dangerous, developed in me. And it can sometimes happen with the wrong people."

Klatten is being seen by the public now, in a way she never wanted, but also in a sense in a way she does want. The media and friends have generally praised her for her personal honesty.

"I've received a lot of letters, from friends, from colleagues, from old classmates I haven't seen for 35 years," she said. "That is touching. They do see me as just a person." (dpa)