More than half a year after the Munich advertising entrepreneur Andrea Tandler was taken into custody, one thing is certain: As expected, the daughter of the former CSU General Secretary Gerold Tandler will also appear in court. The sixth criminal division of the Munich I district court has allowed the Munich I public prosecutor’s office to charge Tandler with tax evasion. This means that the advertising company has to face a process.
Andrea Tandler’s partner Darius N., a Munich restaurateur, will also sit in the dock. The two had received a total of more than 48 million euros in commissions from deals with corona protective masks; but are said to have not correctly taxed a significant part of it. The Munich I public prosecutor accuses the entrepreneur of tax evasion in three cases in the amount of 23.5 million euros and subsidy fraud in state corona aid in the amount of 9,000 euros.
In the case of Darius N., the allegations are less serious; it’s about tax evasion in the millions and aid. Darius N., like Andrea Tandler, has been in custody since January. The public prosecutor’s office and the Munich judiciary assume that both are at risk of absconding. Andrea Tandler has a broad social network in Switzerland; the Tandler family owned an apartment there. According to the investigative files, Andrea Tandler described this apartment in Davos as a second home.
The judiciary also fears that Darius N. could go abroad. The presumption of innocence still applies to the two accused. The pre-trial detention, the indictment and the forthcoming trial will not change that. Andrea Tandler and Darius N. have repeatedly rejected all allegations in the course of the investigation. It remains to be seen what the outcome of the forthcoming trial will be.
The 48 million euros in mask commissions ultimately came from tax revenue
With Andrea Tandler’s help, the Swiss trading company Emix managed to sell FFP2 masks and other corona protective clothing to the health ministries in Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and the federal government shortly after the pandemic began in spring 2020. Emix then paid Tandler and her partner more than 48 million euros in commission from this revenue from German state coffers. Ultimately, this money comes from taxes.
According to the judicial press office, the trial begins on October 4, four days before the Bavarian state elections, which had been planned for a long time. In the indictment against Andrea Tandler, the relationship between the Munich advertising entrepreneur is cited as the reason for the successful mask deals. At the time, Andrea Tandler pointed out in a chat that her father had once been finance minister in Bavaria. A witness claims to have heard at the time that Andrea Tandler had good contacts with ministries and the government. One of the Whatsapp groups evaluated was called “The Ministry”, another apparently “Masketiere”.
The indictment also states that Andrea Tandler brokered the contracts for Emix with the help of her relationships with Monika Hohlmeier. The CSU MEP Hohlmeier is the daughter of the former CSU boss and Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss. The Tandler and Strauss families have been friends for decades. Gerold Tandler, as Bavarian Interior Minister, CSU General Secretary and faction leader in the state parliament, was one of Franz Josef Strauss’s closest confidants. Hohlmeier had put Andrea Tandler in contact with the Bavarian Ministry of Health and the then Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) when trading corona protective masks.
According to his own statements, Hohlmeier neither asked for nor received a fee; the investigations have revealed nothing of the sort. She just wanted to help in the emergency at the beginning of the pandemic. The Munich public prosecutor’s office has rejected suspicions by SPD state chief and parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn against Hohlmeier.
Andrea Tandler’s CSU channels were crucial for the mask deals
The Sixth Criminal Chamber of the Munich I Regional Court had repeatedly dealt with the Tandler case. In a decision of March 2022, the chamber wrote that Tandler’s qualifications for arranging the mask shops beyond the political contacts were not recognizable. Elsewhere in this decision, the court noted: Andrea Tandler’s chat history at the time suggested that the PR entrepreneur had assumed that she would be able to take advantage of the Corona crisis in order to impose completely inflated prices and enrich herself in this way.
The court found that Andrea Tandler’s political connections gave Emix access to key decision-makers. From a purely legal point of view, however, the court decision was a success for the Munich advertising company. She had successfully defended herself at the district court against a search warrant obtained by the Munich I public prosecutor. Investigations by the Munich and Berlin public prosecutor’s offices into suspected money laundering and corruption have come to nothing.
Judge Andrea Wagner, who is considered to be very experienced and meticulous, chairs the sixth criminal division at the Munich I Regional Court. In October last year, Wagner and her chamber sentenced Munich star chef Alfons Schuhbeck to three years and two months in prison for tax evasion amounting to several million euros. The Federal Court of Justice rejected an appeal by the prominent restaurateur. Schuhbeck has to start his prison sentence these days.