Next defeat for Andrea Tandler, one of the central figures of the mask affair in Bavaria: Now the daughter of the former CSU General Secretary Gerold Tandler has failed with a constitutional complaint before the Federal Constitutional Court, as has her business partner. Both had turned against the order of pre-trial detention – they have been imprisoned since January.
The constitutional complaints were not accepted for decision, as the court announced on Thursday. They do not meet “the legal justification and substantiation requirements”. In terms of content, too, “the complainants did not sufficiently substantiate a violation of the constitution”.
The public prosecutor’s office in Munich I recently brought charges against Tandler. Specifically, she is accused of tax evasion in three cases in the amount of 23.5 million euros. It is about unpaid income taxes of 8.7 million euros, jointly evaded gift tax of 6.6 million euros and trade tax evasion of 8.2 million euros. Tandler is also accused of subsidy fraud because she withheld 26.5 million euros in commission from mask deals and applied for Corona emergency aid of 9,000 euros for her advertising agency, according to the prosecutors.
The starting point of the case were commission payments that Tandler, her business partner and partner N. and a third suspect are said to have received at the beginning of the corona pandemic. The entrepreneur had brokered contracts for personal protective equipment, especially masks, between a Swiss company and various federal and state agencies and authorities. Tandler and N. were arrested in January on arrest warrants from the Munich district court and have been in custody since then. With all complaints of detention, the two remained unsuccessful.
Now the district court Munich I has to decide on the opening of main proceedings. If there is a conviction, Tandler and the two other suspects face long prison sentences.
A spokesman for Tandler said immediately after the allegations became known that the lawyers expected that “all other allegations would also prove to be unfounded” once the first proceedings had been discontinued. Tandler and her partner rejected “all allegations raised in public”. Since then, Tandler’s lawyers have not responded to any inquiries.