Four years after the investigation began, the public prosecutor’s office in Nuremberg-Fürth brought charges against two board members of the Schwabacher Zentrum für Arbeit und Kultur e. V. (ZAK), a provider of day care centers. The prosecution charges the executives with “withholding and embezzlement of wages in several cases and over a period of several years,” said the spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office, Heike Klotzbücher Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Because of the suspicion of the bogus self-employment of employees, the public prosecutor’s office and customs had already searched numerous properties of the center in 2019. A ZAK spokeswoman spoke of a “big misunderstanding” at the beginning of the investigation. Initially, four executives were investigated, the charges are now directed against two. A lawyer commissioned by the ZAK had announced that no further comments would be made during the ongoing proceedings. The investigation was initiated by a father of one of the children being cared for. He had his son looked after in a Schwabach facility for years and claims to have observed that employees “were treated like self-employed without being so”. The Economic Criminal Chamber of the Nuremberg-Fürth District Court must now decide whether to open the proceedings. It is the presumption of innocence.
The legal officer of the city of Schwabach, Knut Engelbrecht, had already announced the consequences of the case in 2019. These have now been drawn, says Engelbrecht. The day care system in the Middle Franconian city was reorganized and is now working “on its own”. A settlement with the ZAK was also recently agreed at the administrative court in Ansbach. The city had requested compensation from the center. Also in order not to endanger the socially committed association unduly, the comparison was accepted. After the administrative court proceedings, the impression grew stronger that the organizational work at the ZAK had meanwhile “got out of hand,” says the legal officer.