Alleged accomplices deny accusations in Zurich court
Published: Tuesday, Nov 28th 2023, 13:40
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The alleged accomplices of the 52-year-old million-dollar fraudster denied all allegations before the Zurich District Court on Tuesday. The scammed money is said to have flowed through their accounts. "It's just construction", said one of them.
"What kind of fake invoices? Money was transferred to me by mistake and I forwarded it to the main defendant," said the first alleged accomplice, a horticulturist who happens to be a neighbor and friend of the main defendant.
The main accused, who worked as a construction project manager for Zurich University Hospital, among other things, had his salary paid into the wrong account by mistake - that of the horticulturist. He therefore passed it on to him.
Construction work was never completed
However, the man could not explain why this happened five times in a row. He wasn't familiar with the whole administration and wasn't interested in it. The money, several hundred thousand francs in total, was payments for construction work that had never been carried out.
Another contractor from the construction industry also "accidentally" received large sums of money. It came from the construction company where the main accused worked. The second accomplice also forwarded the money to the 52-year-old.
"Something offset"
The alleged accomplice said that "something had probably been offset". He hadn't thought anything of it. "This is the building trade, it's not unusual." In response to the prosecutor's objection that it is not legal to charge for services without paying taxes, he did not want to say anything more.
The 52-year-old main defendant had already confessed at the start of the trial on Tuesday morning. He said he was sorry. "But at some point I was so deep into it that I couldn't stop." In total, he swindled almost three million francs from construction projects. The canton of Zurich was damaged to the tune of 1.2 million.
He used the same trick to cheat a large Swiss construction company out of roughly the same amount. It was just under half a million for a furniture store that was building a new location.
As project manager, the accused had approved fictitious invoices, for example for the staff building of the university hospital, so that the client paid them. To do this, he forged the signature of his superior because he was not allowed to approve the invoices on his own.
The fictitious invoices were sent by contractors he knew personally, or the main defendant drew them up himself, according to the horticulturist. However, the invoiced work never actually took place, such as landscaping, waterproofing or fire protection.
The project manager and the entrepreneurs then allegedly divided the money between themselves. However, the alleged accomplices deny this. They had not enriched themselves. The prosecution is demanding conditional prison sentences of between 12 and 18 months for them.
A vacation apartment and a horse
Among other things, the main accused used the money to pay for a vacation apartment in Davos, a horse and to help his girlfriend at the time build a house. The prosecution is demanding a partial prison sentence of 3 years, of which only 10 months are to be served. He has already served these 10 months in custody. "A brutally hard time", he said.
So even if he is convicted, he would not have to go back to prison. According to the prosecution's application, the remaining 26 months should be suspended.
Due to the large number of defendants, the verdict will be handed down at a later date. Two other suspects, also accomplices, have already been sentenced to conditional prison sentences in the summary proceedings. They had confessed.
©Keystone/SDA
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