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Alfons Schuhbeck at the start of the trial in Munich
Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
In the trial against star chef Alfons Schuhbeck, the public prosecutor's office has demanded four years and two months in prison for the accused.
The process proved that Schuhbeck had evaded taxes amounting to millions, said public prosecutor Susanne Gehrke-Haibl in her pleading before the Munich I District Court. Schuhbeck was guilty of 21 cases of serious tax evasion.
Gehrke-Haibl accused Schuhbeck of having shown “very high criminal energy”.
He had a computer program specially programmed to be able to manipulate the tills in one of his two Munich restaurants and also took large sums of money from the tills of his second restaurant.
A mitigating factor for Schuhbeck is that after initial hesitation he made a confession.
The prosecution demanded a suspended sentence of one and a half years for aiding and abetting Schuhbeck's co-accused employee, who wrote the cash register manipulation program.
At first it was unclear how the process could continue.
After a break, the process should be continued at noon.
Originally, pleadings and the verdict were planned for Thursday.
You can read more about how Schuhbeck got this far here.
Schuhbeck has been in court since the beginning of October.
However, he confessed and explained that he had done something wrong.
"If I could undo it, I would do it immediately," he declared on the second day of the trial, adding: "I am faced with the ruins of my life's work."
Regardless of a verdict, the process has already had professional consequences for the TV chef, who had already filed for bankruptcy for his company last year: Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) has temporarily removed Schuhbeck's cooking programs from the TV program because of the course of the negotiations the broadcaster announced the day after Schuhbeck's first confession.
No further productions are currently planned.
On the second day of the trial, Schuhbeck said: "If I could undo it, I would do it immediately."
He added: "I stand before the ruins of my life's work."
ani/dpa