Zurich court sentences fraudulent construction project manager
Published: Tuesday, Dec 5th 2023, 13:20
Updated At: Tuesday, Dec 5th 2023, 13:20
العودة إلى البث المباشر
On Tuesday, the District Court of Zurich convicted a 52-year-old construction expert of multiple counts of commercial fraud and multiple counts of forgery. He received a partial prison sentence of 3 years, a conditional fine - and a hefty bill.
The construction project manager had shamelessly exploited the trust placed in him, said the judge at the sentencing hearing. With "relatively great criminal energy", he had caused damage amounting to three million over a long period of around seven years.
Of the three-year prison sentence, the court imposed 26 months on probation, with a probationary period of two years. The Swiss national has already served the remaining 10 months, which will be carried out, in custody.
He has to pay back over two million
Despite being convicted of multiple counts of forgery, multiple counts of commercial fraud and multiple counts of fraud, he will not have to return to prison. He was also given a suspended fine of 120 daily rates.
Nevertheless, the 52-year-old has now been presented with a painful bill: He has to pay back the money he scammed. The canton of Zurich alone is demanding 1.2 million. A further one million is owed to two private companies. One is a construction company, the other a furniture store that built a new location.
"Crime should not pay"
True to the motto "Crime should not pay", the Zurich public prosecutor's office has already confiscated as many assets as possible: a vacation apartment in Davos, a detached house where his former partner still lives, a horse and so on.
These assets are all "liquidated", i.e. sold, so that the injured parties can get their money back. According to the court, they are in no way to blame for the fact that they were defrauded for years. Only with "very, very great effort" could the injured parties have realized that the invoices were false.
Zurich's building department became suspicious
It was only after around seven years that someone at the Zurich Building Department became suspicious, whereupon the authorities filed a criminal complaint and the whole structure collapsed.
As project manager, for example for the renovation of the staff building at Zurich University Hospital, the convicted man had approved fictitious invoices from construction companies so that the canton or other injured parties would pay them.
However, work such as fire protection or gardening was never carried out. The invoices were all forged. They came from contractors from the Aargau, Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft areas whom he knew personally and who then received a share of the money paid or at least knew about the fraud.
Three accomplices who helped him with the fraud were also sentenced on Tuesday. They received conditional prison sentences and fines, so they will not have to go to prison either. However, the bill they will receive will be painful. They will have to pay back hundreds of thousands.
©كيستون/إسدا
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