Hamburg: Ex-district office chief in the Rolling Stones affair in court

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The Rolling Stones at their concert in Hamburg 2017

Photo: Carsten Rehder / dpa

The justice system is again concerned with the free Rolling Stones ticket affair.

Four people are charged before the Hamburg regional court, including the former head of the Hamburg-Nord district office, Harald Rösler.

He is accused of corruption and infidelity.

At the start of the proceedings, the former deputy head of the district office, who was also accused, and a representative of the organizer FKP Scorpio, according to a court spokesman, rejected the allegations.

The other accused were silent.

According to the indictment, the district office is said to have charged the company around EUR 400,000 too little for using the city park.

In return, Rösler is said to have requested a quota of 400 tickets from the organizer.

According to the public prosecutor's office, the initiative should have come from the head of the district office.

According to the indictment, 100 tickets were declared as free tickets, 300 as "purchase tickets".

Authority chief Rösler had the free tickets distributed to 40 employees in his anteroom.

He is said to have offered the "purchase cards" to "friends of the house."

Among other things, according to the prosecutor, three state councilors attacked.

The ex-State Councilor Elke Badde (SPD) was therefore sentenced to a fine of 120 daily rates of 170 euros each, a total of 20,400 euros.

In addition, Rösler and his wife are said to have accepted an invitation from the organizer to a reception.

The defendant received "Premium Gold" cards worth 1398 euros.

They included a conveniently located parking lot and shuttle service, investigators said.

Rösler has been in age-related retirement since 2018, when the allegations against him were already known.

Wrong application?

The vice of the district office of Hamburg-Nord is accused of aiding and abetting bribery.

According to the public prosecutor's office, he wrote an application that was incorrect in content, according to which the acceptance of the 400 tickets was a voluntary donation by the organizer to the district office and its deputy chief.

He had Rösler sign it.

The deputy chief rejected the allegations, according to a court spokesman.

He said the fee had already been fixed before it came to free tickets.

Incidentally, such quotas are common nationwide.

Not cheap at all?

He himself only came along when examining the text of the contract and assumed that the cards had actually been offered voluntarily.

The organizers would have paid significantly more than for any other space.

FKP Skorpio also had it explained in court that the fee was by no means cheap.

In the affair there were at times 49 investigations, for example against officials who accepted free tickets.

Most of the cases were closed against pecuniary payment, but prosecutors had brought charges in several cases.

jpz / AFP