There are probably not many places in Bavaria that are as non-baroque as the criminal justice center in Munich. Even the traditional jacket, which at home in the district of Miesbach can still be considered reliable service clothing for all occasions, is noticeably out of the ordinary in this ambience. It is said that the district court in Munich II on Thursday is once again dealing with a “Bavarian-Baroque, customary, habitual action”. At least that’s how a defense attorney, who was called in from Berlin at times, described what the public prosecutor’s office accuses the long-time CEO of the Miesbach district savings bank, Georg Bromme, and the former CSU district administrator Jakob Kreidl. In 2019, the regional court rated all of this as infidelity and imposed suspended sentences of one and a half years on Bromme and eleven months on Kreidl. Because the BGH has largely confirmed this verdict, despite all the amusement about the supposed Bavarian Baroque, the district court now has to work through those few details of the Miesbach amigo affair in which the appeals from Bromme and the public prosecutor’s office were successful.
According to their defense attorneys, Bromme and Kreidl – one in a traditional jacket and the other in a suit – were sitting in court three years ago from a much more distant past. From a time when compliance in corporate management was not yet an issue. Because the business conduct of the district savings bank at that time, for which Bromme as CEO and Kreidl as chairman of the board of directors are responsible, was quite generous, at least towards their own board members and the local politicians on the board of directors. The affair was triggered by a celebration of Kreidl’s 60th birthday in 2012, which cost almost 120,000 euros and was largely paid for by the bank away.
BGH has strong doubts about the supposed eagle protection project
In court, however, this celebration soon no longer played a major role. Financially and legally, some trips were the most difficult: Instead of holding meetings of the board of directors in Miesbach, Bromme invited the members and their partners to Vienna, the Stubai Valley or Styria, where you could have a good time in five-star hotels and came up with handsome wine bills. A “mayor’s trip” to Interlaken in Switzerland initially cost more than 80,000 euros, including almost 9,000 euros for the “James Bond trip” to the Schilthorn, where scenes from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” are set.
The district court had already ruled in the first instance that such majestic journeys had not primarily been undertaken in the service of the savings bank, but rather in the private interests of the board of directors and executives. Which instance judged what and how now determined the first day of the new edition at the district court. Because the legally binding parts of the first judgment will also be needed for sentencing, this was read out for hours, together with the written justification and other documents. In the episode, the focus will be on gifts that Bromme gave to executives and board members, including writing implements and all sorts of decorative items with hunting motifs. According to the BGH, such bank-internal gifts cannot be justified with an external advertising effect, as the first instance had done. “It was so common in the house, plain and simple, and it was part of business policy,” said Bromme on Thursday about the generosity at the time, which was primarily related to customers and the district. In previous decades, for example, the district administrator’s office had always been equipped by the savings bank, and even a portable telephone and computer had been made available.
This was also explained by Kreidl, who, in his own words, “has taken over a practice that has been maintained for decades” and never received the slightest hint of irregularities. Unfortunately, he himself did not realize that the standards had changed in the meantime. However, none of this happened in secret, but “everything was recorded in the accounts down to the last, smallest detail,” said Kreidl. He never expected or even asked for personal gifts, but he also didn’t turn them down so as not to offend Bromme.
Objects for the reasonably representative furnishing of his office were casually placed on his desk by Bromme and never considered his property, Kreidl confirmed. Accordingly, he never took anything home with him, not even in 2014, when “I had to leave relatively quickly and at short notice due to pressure from above”. All he found in the basement was a suitcase from the savings bank for his business trips. It was quite dusty, but otherwise “really like new,” said Kreidl and offered to bring the suitcase to the court. “We don’t want him, but maybe the district savings bank,” said the presiding judge.
What the court still needs, however, is clarity about Bromme’s monetary donations to his hunting friends in Tyrol, because the BGH also wants to see them punished. The Tyrolean hunters apparently did youth work with the money and bought badges. Accordingly, the Federal Court of Justice doubted that it had even flowed indirectly into an eagle protection project in the district of Miesbach and that the Tyroleans were keeping an eye on eagles at all. According to Bromme’s statement on Thursday, however, there was a kind of business behind it: donations against sighting reports for the golden eagle project. The ducks plus red wine, on the other hand, with which the savings bank came up after a few district council meetings organized by Kreidl, can be justified with the interests of the district, according to the BGH. The court must now form a new punishment from all this. A verdict is expected in May.