In the appeal process, the Munich I Regional Court sentenced Jérôme Boateng to a fine of 120 daily rates of 10,000 euros for bodily harm.
The district court saw it as proven that the 34-year-old insulted, hit and injured his then partner on a Caribbean vacation in 2018. It essentially confirms the verdict from last year, when the Munich District Court sentenced the former Bayern Munich player to a fine of 1.8 million euros. Because all those involved in the process appealed against this verdict, the appeal process started in October.
Before the appeal process began, Boateng had expressly rejected a settlement proposal from the court, saying he could not reconcile that with his conscience. He didn’t want to testify either. “He denies criminal activity, but will otherwise not comment on the matter,” his lawyer told the court on Thursday.
Last year, the district court in Munich sentenced him to a fine of 1.8 million euros for bodily harm. At the time, the judge saw it as proven that Boateng, who played for Bayern Munich for ten years and is now under contract with Olympique Lyon, insulted his ex-girlfriend on a vacation together in the Caribbean in 2018, hit her in the face and her has hurt.
Last year’s verdict did not become final. Not only Boateng, who had denied the allegations before the district court, appealed – the public prosecutor’s office and his ex-girlfriend, who appears as a joint plaintiff, also. The indictment, which assumes dangerous bodily harm, had demanded a suspended sentence of one and a half years and a fine of 1.5 million euros in the first trial, Boateng’s defense attorney at the time an acquittal. The footballer now has a new lawyer.
Judge Andreas Forstner actually wanted to make the verdict on the second day of the hearing, October 21st. But it did not get to that. On that day, an incident on the fringes of the hearing also made the headlines: after an incident with Boateng’s security service, the Munich I public prosecutor’s office began investigations into suspected violations of the most personal sphere of life by taking pictures of several alleged participants, after a witness had testified in court that she was filmed by two security guards entering the building and felt threatened.
The woman, who said in court that she had seen Boateng attack, hit and insult her former girlfriend on a Caribbean vacation, burst into tears on the witness stand. “You’re just afraid,” she said, “that you’ll be threatened or your family will be threatened.”
After determining the personal details, Boateng’s lawyers emphasized that the security service, which had already looked after Boateng at the start of the trial the day before, had only “determined the environment” in order to be able to assess “Boateng’s security situation”. It was a matter of pure “object clarification” and the witness was not specifically filmed and was only filmed from behind.