Egon Greipl is found guilty of 27 counts of withholding and embezzlement of wages. Bavaria’s former chief monument conservator had only employed assistants on a work contract instead of giving them permanent employment contracts.
The Munich district court has sentenced the former Bavarian general conservator Egon Greipl to seven months in prison on probation. On Tuesday, the court found Greipl guilty of withholding and embezzling wages in 27 cases because, as head of the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, he had only employed assistants on a work contract basis until 2013 instead of giving them permanent employment contracts.
Despite previous warnings and a corresponding court decision, Greipl had stuck to this controversial practice because the tasks of the state office could not have been managed otherwise in view of the reduced budget. The sentence remained within the framework that the court had announced two weeks ago after a legal discussion.
The Free State had to retroactively pay more than 700,000 euros in social security contributions because of the wrong contracts and successfully sued its former top official Greipl in 2019 for a corresponding amount of damages. After numerous companions such as the former Bavarian Minister of Education Hans Maier (CSU) campaigned for Greipl, who was also in poor health, and collected donations, the Free State has now reduced its claim to 450,000 euros.