It is not often that police officers report other police officers – especially at the higher service level. But that is exactly what an official from Baden-Württemberg did: He filed a criminal complaint with the Munich public prosecutor’s office on suspicion of breach of trust, against two colleagues from Munich, among others. That was at the end of January, and little has happened since then.
When asked, the deputy press spokeswoman Juliane Grotz initially only confirmed that “the local jurisdiction of the Munich I public prosecutor’s office for processing this case was being examined”. At least that now seems to have been clarified: This week, the European public prosecutor’s office EPPO in Luxembourg took over the investigation, because it is about financial matters of the European Union (EU).
The “European Public Prosecutor’s Office” (EPPO) is still a young institution, it only started its work against fraud, money laundering and corruption to the detriment of the EU on June 1, 2021. In Bavaria, too, it is less than a year since the state government issued an “anti-corruption guideline” in order to “maintain the population’s trust in the integrity of state institutions and avert damage,” as it is said. In Munich, trust in the police has recently suffered because of the cocaine affair. So now there is a threat of new trouble.
Point 6 (“prosecution of acts of corruption”) of the guideline states: “For reasons of general prevention (…) the greatest possible acceleration is sought.” The accelerated prosecution looks like this in this case: The Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior informed its Bavarian counterpart about the allegations made by the officer in mid-January, even before the man reported his Bavarian colleagues. “We immediately forwarded the documents made available to us to the Munich I public prosecutor’s office to check their criminal relevance,” said a spokesman for the local ministry. The documents are now in Luxembourg.
He has concerns about “personal, organizational and financial mixing”
Admittedly, the matter is complicated: It has its starting point in Jordan, where two development aid projects against radicalization and extremism were started in September 2021 under the leadership of the Bavarian police. On the one hand, a so-called twinning project, funded by the EU, in which experts from Baden-Württemberg are also involved. And on the other hand, an infrastructure project called “Building for Prevention”, financed by the Federal Foreign Office (AA). Formally, both projects are separate, although they have the same goal: to help the Jordanian police, with knowledge (to be provided by the EU project) and with equipment such as computers and vehicles (which the AA project is intended to procure). .
There is now a personal overlap in the projects: the head of the AA project, Jürgen F. (name changed), is also responsible for a part of the EU project. For an official from Baden-Württemberg, that obviously has a “Gschmäckle”.
The Swabian Volker B. (name changed) was sent to the Jordanian capital Amman as a permanent representative for the duration of the 18-month EU project in order to coordinate the technical and financial processing there. In a letter available to the SZ in December, he reported to the EU delegate in Jordan and the local Ministry for International Cooperation of concerns about increasing “personal, organizational and financial confusion with the parallel Building for Prevention project”.
His suspicion: Munich-based Jürgen F. and two of his employees billed their work for the Foreign Office via the EU budget – which entailed a “considerable economic advantage” for them. Volker B. put it at 2,000 to 3,000 euros per week.
“Obviously they wanted to silence me as soon as possible.”
The whole thing is happening with the approval of the head of the EU project, Markus S., who is based at the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (BLKA). (name changed) . He had Jürgen F. – formerly a BLKA man himself – and his colleagues billed for several lucrative assignments; Overall, it should now be a five-digit amount if the allegations are correct. There was a rift between the Swabian Volker B. and the supervisor Markus S., and a little later B. was dismissed.
“Obviously they wanted to silence me as quickly as possible,” suspects Volker B. After only five months in Amman, he was recalled at the end of January. After his return, he substantiated his allegations with a criminal complaint against Markus S. and Jürgen F. and two other employees on suspicion of infidelity.
The BLKA and the Munich Presidium reacted without understanding to the allegations. “The support of the twinning project through the infrastructure project is contractually regulated and was intended from the start,” it says on request. This was “communicated and agreed upon in the application process, in the selection process and at the beginning of the twinning project as part of a presentation that took place with the participation of the EU authorities”. All parties involved saw “a high added value in the cooperation of both projects”. Jürgen F.’s double function would even save travel and personnel expenses.
Whether everything is actually in order must now be determined as quickly as possible: either to refute the allegations – or to prevent further damage. In the Free State’s corruption guideline, it is expressly pointed out that “preventive measures against concealment” must be initiated in the event of a criminally relevant suspicion. But that is no longer a decision by the Bavarian law enforcement authorities.