Thu, Nov 16th 2023
On Wednesday, the Zurich District Court sentenced the former director of the Zurich waste disposal company ERZ. Urs Pauli received a conditional prison sentence of two years and a fine of 180 daily rates of CHF 60.
The court convicted the 65-year-old former head of waste management of dishonest conduct in office, multiple counts of falsification of documents in office and dishonest conduct of business. The court refrained from giving reasons. Pauli himself also kept a low profile. “Everything has been said,” he said succinctly.
The trial was conducted in abbreviated proceedings. This was possible because Pauli had basically confessed and was able to agree on a sentencing proposal with the public prosecutor.
From 2015 onwards, numerous irregularities came to light at Entsorgung & Recycling Zürich (ERZ). An investigation showed that the waste disposal companies under Pauli were a “parallel world with its own rules”, with expensive company cars, black coffers full of cash and false bookings with which he concealed cost overruns on projects.
On his own initiative, Pauli launched a vintage car museum for historic garbage trucks and a swimming area in a former sewage basin. To reward his employees, he even created a facility for emus and wild birds. In 2017, Pauli was dismissed without notice by the city council. He never found another job after that.
This “parallel world with its own rules” was made possible above all because he enjoyed the full trust of the city council. For a long time, several politicians turned a blind eye to the fact that Pauli financially restructured the once loss-making departments and got projects off the ground quickly.
The city of Zurich’s residents, who had been paying excessively high water and waste disposal fees for years, were left out in the cold. The city adjusted the fees downwards again after Pauli’s departure.
Even after Pauli’s conviction, the ERZ affair is not yet legally over. Proceedings are still pending against a former ERZ project manager and a private entrepreneur for passive and active bribery respectively.
A former member of ERZ management and two other executives were convicted by summary penalty order in mid-2020 and April 2023 for multiple counts of forgery and dishonest business management. However, several other cases were dropped, including the one against Pauli’s predecessor.
The legal dispute in which the City of Zurich is reclaiming the money for the illegal company cars is also still pending.
©Keystone/SDA
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