Sponsoring affair: another ten days of the process

Created: 01/25/2022, 07:00

Again pictures from the court: Parts of the savings bank trial are being reopened © THOMAS PLETTENBERG

The district court of Munich II is renegotiating erroneous acquittals after the BGH ruling.

The first day of the trial is March 22nd.

District – Probably no other topic has given the district of Miesbach as many national headlines in the past decade as the so-called savings bank affair.

And still no line has been drawn.

In March, the Munich II Regional Court reopened parts of the process after the Federal Court of Justice had overturned parts of the first judgment last May (we reported).

As long as no verdict is final, the accused - ex-District Administrator Jakob Kreidl and the former Sparkasse boss Georg Bromme - do not have to complete the community service hours that were previously provided for in the conviction.

And: In the case of Bromme, the pension payments will continue to flow in the undiminished amount until the final judgment.

At Kreidl, the prosecutor's office has already reduced the pension by 30 percent.

Affair ultimately cost ex-district administrator the office

The ex-district administrator would have long wanted to end the affair, which - in combination with other misconduct - ultimately cost him the office.

But the public prosecutor's office had something against it and appealed against the judgment that the Munich II Regional Court pronounced in April 2019.

Georg Bromme did the same.

The Federal Court of Justice actually recognized deficiencies.

On the one hand, the Senate – and this rarely happens – decided directly on acquittals.

According to the verdict, the fact that the district savings bank paid for the duck dinners after seminars by district administrators was not objectionable.

Court: Occasional gifts must serve a business purpose

It is the other way around with occasional gifts, which Bromme generously donated and which Kreidl, among others, accepted.

Because these were distributed within the management team of the savings bank, an entrepreneurial purpose is not recognizable.

Furthermore, the Sparkasse should not have subsidized the Tyrolean state hunting protection association as it did and should not have paid for the equipment of the district office.

The acquittals for Bromme that took place here "show the accused to have legal errors that favor them," according to the BGH judgment.

Excessive benefits would justify the initial suspicion of granting or accepting an advantage.

It's about things like a silver photo box (1800 euros), a writing set (785 euros) or a case of wine (300 euros).

The regional court had regarded the items as loans or as socially adequate in terms of their value.

Acquittals in individual cases incorrect in law

The district court must now renegotiate the objected acquittals and, after a verdict, redefine the overall sentence.

It starts on March 22nd.

A total of ten days of negotiations are scheduled - a considerably larger framework than at least Kreidl's defense would have liked.

"You can't avoid taking evidence," says court spokesman Florian Gliwitzky on request.

In the first judgment, the district court had imposed suspended sentences of 18 and eleven months, respectively, and 300 and 200 hours of community service for Bromme and Kreidl.