Upon request, the entrepreneur issued excessive invoices and repaid the difference to the client.
A fraud process that started on Monday at the Klagenfurt Regional Court is about the procurement of bribes, excessive bills and kickback payments. The accused are a 44-year-old former entrepreneur and a 57-year-old ex-managing director of the subsidiary of a large construction company.
Prosecutor Doris Kügler put the total damage done at more than one million euros. The ex-entrepreneur made a comprehensive confession at the beginning.
The entrepreneur had carried out electrical work in tunnel construction for the construction company for years, and in 2007 the second defendant became the construction company's managing director. According to the indictment, the managing director approached the electrician to suggest a deal.
The construction company needs bribes to attract business in Eastern Europe. The entrepreneur can help by issuing excessive invoices and returning the difference to the actual invoice amount in cash to the managing director. A list of the defendant showed that a total of 724,000 euros had flowed back to the construction company.
The ex-managing director of the construction company admitted to the jury chaired by Judge Manfred Herrnhofer that he had demanded such practices from his business partner. However, he denies the amount of the amount, it was a total of a maximum of 150,000 euros. Contrary to the accusation of the prosecution, he himself did not benefit financially. The construction company vehemently denies that they would have operated bribes.
The ex-head of the company justified his acceptance of the proposal to generate black money that he needed the orders so that his company would remain profitable. The managing director told him that the company needed money for “construction site grants”. The idea apparently did not surprise him, as he stated at the interrogation: “As is often the case on construction sites, you put money to get the orders.”
This is how it worked out, if the company had needed 20,000 euros in cash, for example, he would have charged correspondingly more for an order of 100,000 euros, i.e. the 20,000 plus what he would have to pay more in taxes and duties. There were also other “services”.
He was asked to get a night vision device for a “baron” in Hungary. He bought it for around 1,500 euros and handed it over to the managing director together with around 5,000 euros in cash. Once it was said that the mayor of Vilnius needed money and that he should make an inflated bill again.
In addition to fraud, the indictment also accuses the ex-entrepreneur of fraudulent krida amounting to 120,000 euros and withholding around 100,000 euros in employee contributions, both in connection with the bankruptcy of his company. He pleaded guilty on these two points too.
The ex-managing director, who is accused of serious commercial fraud, doesn't want to keep a euro for himself. He handed the black money over to the second managing director of his company, who distributed the bribe.
A Christmas party in Hungary was once paid for in this way. According to public prosecutor Kügler, the second managing director vehemently denies these allegations, an investigation against him has also been discontinued.
The trial continued in the afternoon and a verdict was not expected.
