Damage of ten million euros
Prison sentences for fraud with invented wind farms
May 12, 2022, 9:00 p.m
They got foreign companies to invest millions in wind farm projects in Lower Saxony. The catch: the projects didn’t even exist. The court sees “high criminal energy” in the two accused and imposes long prison sentences.
In a major commercial criminal lawsuit about fictitious wind farm projects, the two main defendants were sentenced to long prison terms by the Osnabrück district court. The two shareholders of a group of companies, aged 32 and 65, are to go to prison for gang and commercial fraud for seven and a half and seven years respectively. The judges took it for granted that they deceived big energy companies.
According to this, the accused enticed foreign companies to invest ten million euros in several alleged wind farm projects in Lower Saxony between 2015 and 2021, which were not planned at all. To do this, they used masses of forged documents, such as municipal land use agreements and letters of support from municipalities. The defendants confessed fully during the trial, which began in August 2021.
The siblings accused of aiding and abetting and the mother of the 32-year-old were also convicted. The court sentenced them to prison terms of between three years and three years and seven months. In the board’s view, they were involved in the deceptions but only acted on instructions.
According to the spokesman, the court emphasized the criminal energy and ruthlessness of the accused in its verdict. At the same time, it pointed out that some of the forgeries used were of a very amateurish nature. The damaged companies included German subsidiaries of large energy companies from Italy and Great Britain.
When it came to sentences, the court stayed below the demands of the prosecution, who had requested eight years and five months and eight years, respectively, for the two main defendants. The defense asked for a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. For the other accused, the public prosecutor demanded between three years and three months and three years and ten months. The defense pleaded for reduced sentences, including probation in one case.