According to the indictment, he is said to have provided false delivery notes and invoices without anything being delivered. The defendant, who had remained silent until then, presented the court with a surprising version and described an alleged bribery system in the company, in which he accused two employees.
The public prosecutor’s office in Ried has accused the Bosnian, who has two previous convictions, of serious fraud. He faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. The man is said to have posed as the managing director and sole shareholder of a Slovenian company. According to the indictment, between January 2017 and November 2020 he lured a total of around 2.3 million euros out of the Upper Austrian company with forged invoices and delivery notes. It was not until 2020 that an employee of the meat company discovered the fraud, after which payments to the accused were stopped.
According to the defendant, he has delivered pallets and boxes to the company since 2015. After a while, two employees approached him and said they wanted to help earn some money. They would do the same with other suppliers. Specifically, he had only unloaded part of the goods, but the entire load had been signed, he explained the system accordingly. In return, he had to give the employees money. For example, he paid 22 euros in bribes per pallet, but he would get 27 euros per pallet. The bottom line is that only a small part of the stolen money was left to him. He doesn’t know exactly how much, probably 2,000 to 3,000 euros per month. Of the 2.3 million accused, his defense attorney admitted 100,000 euros. The defendant said he did not know whether other people in the meat plant were informed apart from the two he was accused of.
However, the chairman of the jury panel drew the accused’s attention to several inconsistencies in the details of his statements during the interrogation of the accused. He excludes a judgment on Wednesday – not least in view of the responsibility of the accused.
Source: Nachrichten
