After more than a year and a half of extensive investigations, police officers from the Kirchdorf district, in close cooperation with the State Criminal Police Office of Upper Austria, the economic and corruption public prosecutor’s office, the financial police and the social security agency, succeeded in clarifying a large-scale case of human trafficking, organized undeclared work and serious fraud.
According to this, a 63-year-old German citizen from the Vöcklabruck district is accused of having unlawfully placed a total of 233 Iraqi asylum seekers as bogus self-employed as managing director of a company construct across the entire federal territory as bogus self-employed people, sometimes changing on a daily basis. He exploited the legal ignorance of the non-linguistic asylum seekers and carried out the business registrations in the field of facility management with the respective residence authorities. The asylum seekers saw themselves as employees of the dummy company and had no knowledge of their independence. His 72-year-old accountant from Vienna is also involved and will also have to answer for it.
The asylum seekers received an hourly wage of €9.50 gross and were referred to gas stations as far away as Vorarlberg and Carinthia according to a duty roster drawn up by the accused. There they had to provide shifts of up to 17 hours without corresponding rest periods and without any surcharge. The asylum seekers also had to pay social security and other taxes from this hourly wage. In addition, travel times to the workplaces were not compensated, resulting in labor exploitation of the asylum seekers.
livelihood funded
In addition, the 63-year-old employed asylum seekers with a sufficiently good knowledge of German as secretaries (also bogus self-employed) who distributed the rosters to the “employees”. From among the bogus self-employed, he appointed drivers who took the asylum seekers to the respective jobs in their private cars. Without any knowledge of German and without the appropriate training, they were also placed with a security company, which used them at football and ice hockey games.
As an unlawful employment agent, the accused received between €14.50 and €16.50 per hour worked from the partner companies and financed his livelihood through the organized undeclared work of the asylum seekers. The exploitative working hours (double shifts and insufficient rest periods) as well as the exploitation of their predicament, otherwise being unable to do any lawful work, reinforce the suspicion of human trafficking. He forced the asylum seekers to work and threatened them with losing their jobs in the event of illness or a vacation request. Furthermore, the suspicion of serious commercial fraud arose through account openings.
A total of seven account openings, a house search and the subsequent evaluation of the secured company documents took place. A total of 57 out of 233 Iraqi asylum seekers were questioned as victims or witnesses.
Source: Nachrichten
