There was a moment in the criminal proceedings against Neumarkt’s OB Thomas Thumann, in which one had to struggle with laughter attacks. Thumann recently had to answer in court for household embezzlement and his defense attorney Harald Straßner used his plea for a cabaret ironic push towards the public prosecutor.
At an early stage, the latter made the mayor, who allegedly illegally had two city employees regrouped, a very generous “offer”: nine months in prison, “kindly suspended on probation”. The Thumann case involved alleged damage of 18,583.90 euros. Straßner ventured a comparative look at white-collar criminal cases in the auto industry, where damage amounts to tens of millions of euros are at stake – and the accused also get away with suspended sentences.
To make it short: Straßner rejected the warm-hearted offer of detention, and his client was acquitted in the process. The prosecution’s view that an external law firm could have been consulted in contentious legal issues of the highly complex collective bargaining law was not only found curious by the judge. That should be more justified than a few thousand euros for city employees who want to keep a mayor and be paid properly?
So to Bamberg, where hardly any notice was taken of the criminal proceedings against the mayor of Neumarkt (less than 100 kilometers away). Oddly enough, Bamberg’s mayor Andreas Starke was exposed to an “offer” from the prosecution a year ago. In his case, too, it was about city employees who were allegedly too well paid and the allegation of infidelity. However, there was by no means a prison sentence for Starke. But only a penalty order.
In 2022, Starke spoke of the most difficult decision of his tenure. In order not to expose himself and the city to public criminal proceedings, he rejected the advice of his lawyer and accepted the penalty order. Since then he has been considered a “convicted man”.
Was that well thought out? Procedures are different, of course. The Neumarkt case also goes to the next instance. And yet: the judge found that the accusation of household embezzlement requires “looking very carefully”. It cannot be ruled out that a court in the Bamberg case would have judged very similarly. You’ll never know.