In the first revision process in the Regensburg corruption affair, the Munich I Regional Court sentenced the building contractor Volker Tretzel to a suspended sentence of one year and six months on Thursday – for granting advantages and violating the party law. There is also a fine of 1.5 million euros.
His former managing director received a suspended sentence of one year and three months, as well as a fine. In doing so, the criminal division largely followed the requests of the prosecution and defense. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
Before the verdict, the court, defense and public prosecutor’s office had reached an agreement: Tretzel should get a maximum of one year and nine months, plus a maximum fine of 1.5 million euros – if he confesses. And that’s how it happened: last week, the entrepreneur admitted that he had provided the former mayor of Regensburg, Joachim Wolbergs, with veiled party donations through a straw man system for years in order to secure “a certain goodwill” from the mayor. The 80-year-old Tretzel had previously denied all allegations of corruption against him for years.
In his confession, Tretzel said that he had told the Wolbergs at the beginning of the flow of money “that I would spread my donations over several years and several people, also to stay below the limit of 10,000 euros per year”, the publication limit laid down in the party law . A statement that burdens the ex-OB and is likely to have consequences for the second process that has to be renegotiated in the Regensburg affair – precisely that against Wolbergs, who has always denied having been for sale.
The proceedings against Wolbergs and Tretzel had to be reopened after the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) overturned the two original judgments of the Regensburg Regional Court from 2019 and referred them back, this time to Munich.
In the first trial, Tretzel was also found guilty of granting advantages, but the sentence was less: ten months’ imprisonment on probation, a fine of 500,000 euros. Wolbergs, on the other hand, remained unpunished, despite a guilty verdict for accepting an advantage. The BGH found the judgment too mild and decided that this case also had to be re-negotiated in Munich. A date for the revision proceedings against Wolbergs has not yet been set.