Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Bonn bank manager plays Robin Hood for overdrawn customers

A former bank manager from a Bonn suburb has been handed a suspended sentence for helping out poor clients by temporarily transferring money from the accounts of wealthy people.

Published: 24 November 2009 10:09 CET
Bonn bank manager plays Robin Hood for overdrawn customers
Photo: DPA

The 62-year-old woman, who played the role of a pencil-pushing Robin Hood from 2003 to 2005, faces up to four years in jail for misappropriating some €7.6 million to aid skint customers in danger of overdrawing their accounts.

Hoping only to give the bank’s poorer clients a bit of breathing room, the woman managed to return €6.5 million to the proper accounts, but some were so far overdrawn it was impossible to wire €1.1 million back.

Though she never skimmed anything off for herself, the woman was convicted of 117 cases of embezzlement and received 22 months on parole, her lawyer Thomas Ohm said on Monday evening.

According to Ohm, the former bank manger is now penniless herself after having her small pension partially seized to cover some of the bank’s damages.

“She has to live off the bare minimum,” Ohm said, adding that he and his client agreed the verdict was “completely correct” for the offence. “It’s appropriate for the circumstances. That’s why we’ve opted against legal recourse.”

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

SHOW COMMENTS