Enlarge image
Felix Sturm
Photo:
Federico Gambarini / dpa
Professional boxer Felix Sturm does not have to go to jail for as long as the court originally decided.
In an appeal hearing, the Cologne district court reduced the original sentence from three years in prison to two years and four months.
Sturm were accused of tax evasion, attempted tax evasion and a violation of the doping law with willful bodily harm.
“You have to be satisfied with the result.
That’s eight months less, ”said Sturm when asked after the verdict was pronounced.
He had already spent nine months in custody in 2019.
He then told SPIEGEL about his experiences in prison and announced a sporting comeback.
Since then, Sturm has been in the boxing ring twice and has won both fights.
It is still unclear how the 42-year-old will go on in terms of sport.
The presiding judge had spoken in the grounds of the judgment of "seriously deviating statements" compared to the first judgment from April 2020.
At that time, the regional court had found a tax loss of around one million euros, which the judgment now issued corrected to around 680,000 euros.
"From the originally accused ten million euros of evaded taxes, there are still around 680,000 euros left in the end," said defense attorney Nils Kröber.
Sturm, whose real name is Adnan Catic, was arrested in April 2019 and faced with charges of evading ten million euros in taxes.
Sturm had been in custody until shortly before Christmas 2019 and was allowed to leave the prison after paying bail.
Sturm had appealed against the ruling issued in April 2020 to the Federal Court of Justice (BGH).
This referred back to the regional court for renegotiation.
The BGH, however, left the findings of the first judgment on tax evasion in 2008 and 2009 as well as on attempted tax evasion in 2013 unobjectionable, as did the decision to violate the Anti-Doping Act in the act of deliberate bodily harm.
Sturm had fought against the Russian Fyodor Tschudinow in February 2016 in Oberhausen with the performance-enhancing drug Stanozolol.
As a result, the fight was canceled and Sturm was convicted of willful assault.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
krä / dpa