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The tax fraud relates to voluntary fees paid at motorway service stations and in fast-food restaurants
Photo: Franziska Gabbert / dpa
A 49-year-old from Bestesee is said to have defrauded the tax office of a total of 1.2 million euros in tax money with income from toilets on the motorway and in fast-food restaurants.
The trial against the managing director of a cleaning company began at the Cottbus district court.
The public prosecutor accuses the 49-year-old woman of concealing sales and profits from voluntarily paid toilet fees from 2005 to 2008.
The woman, who calmly followed the statements of the court, did not initially comment on the allegations.
The indictment was read at the start of the trial on Thursday, a court spokeswoman said.
The accused was therefore the managing director of a cleaning company in Brandenburg.
This is said to have mainly dealt with the cleaning of toilets, especially at motorway service stations and in fast food restaurants.
According to the public prosecutor's office, in the years 2005 to 2008 the accused concealed toilet money sales and the profits made in eight cases.
According to the public prosecutor's office, the special gravity must be proven for each act.
It is about tax fraud from 50,000 euros.
The mother of the accused testified as the first witness in the trial.
She explained that although her daughter was the managing director of the cleaning company based in Königs Wusterhausen, she had nothing to do with the income.
The business was managed by the mother's friend, who had died in the meantime, as a partner, and her daughter was responsible for the bookkeeping, among other things.
"My daughter didn't want to see any money," the 69-year-old said in court.
The defendant's defense attorney pointed out in a statement that her client did not know the amount of the proceeds.
You had no insight into the "real" business processes.
There are few comparable cases
The difficulty is that there are few comparable cases, senior prosecutor Elvira Klein told the German Press Agency after the first day of the hearing.
Calculations of the amount of damage were based on estimates and mean values.
"You have to approach the result that is most likely, as close as possible to reality," says Klein.
The search for the truth is also made more difficult by the fact that the investigations took 15 years before the trial began.
After 10 years from the act, tax evasion would become statute-barred in a particularly serious case.
The case is also made more difficult by the fact that, according to the court, the cleaning company's cash books, which are supposed to prove the income, have not yet been found.
The mother who was questioned as a witness could not provide any information about this either.
The fact that four of the 78 sanitary facilities are in Austria and not in Germany also plays a role for the criminal court.
It is questionable whether German law applies in these cases.
If convicted, the 49-year-old faces a prison sentence of between six months and ten years, according to the court.
A total of six hearing dates are scheduled for the process.
28 witnesses are summoned, including the Cottbus tax office in September.
mgo/AFP/dpa