From
Lisa Swift
Franz Xaver Steininger, who was mayor of Zwiesel from 2012 to 2021, has been sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year and two months by the Landshut District Court. The court found him guilty of fraud and bankruptcy, and Steininger was acquitted of the corruption charges.
Steininger had been heavily in debt for years and was virtually insolvent. “From 2015 to October 2018 he managed on the edge of the financial abyss,” said the judge on Tuesday afternoon in his verdict. Before becoming mayor, Steininger worked as a self-employed civil engineer and mainly had debts to the tax office. Instead of paying them off or filing for bankruptcy, he put his money in an escrow account managed by a tax office. The creditors therefore had no access to the money to which they were entitled, which is why the court sentenced Steininger to bankruptcy in 32 cases.
The court found him guilty of fraud because he took out a loan from a local businesswoman without informing her of his dire situation. The court apparently found the public prosecutor’s allegations of corruption incomprehensible. She had accused him of having accepted loans from entrepreneurs and, in return, of having promoted their concerns as mayor. The loans were almost never repaid. One of the cases was dropped during the trial. In the second case, too, the court found that no unlawful agreement between the entrepreneur and the ex-mayor could be proven.
Due to the severity of the sentence, Steininger must expect that his retirement salary from his time as mayor will be canceled. The verdict is not yet legally binding.