Trial at the Offenburg District Court
According to the indictment in Lahr, a 36-year-old man is said to have tried to defraud the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians out of a lot of money during the corona pandemic in 2021. A verdict from the Offenburg district court is still pending.
Quick money with quick tests: The Corona test centers were not always billed correctly. Here is a symbolic image. Photo: Bernd Weißbrod/dpa
by Hubert Röderer
2 hours 2 minutes ago
Even after several hours of proceedings before the lay judges’ court at the Offenburg district court, many questions remain unanswered: Is the charge based simply on a technical oversight? Or did a former operator of a Corona test center actually try to make a big deal – at a time when a lot of things related to Corona in Germany were in flux, many official regulations were knitted with hot needles and there were little or no functioning control mechanisms?
Many saw the opportunity to make money
Hinz and Kunz seemed to sense an opportunity to enrich themselves – through billing fraud. Against this background, the trial began on Tuesday against a now 36-year-old man from southern Ortenau, who hardly says anything in the trial, but has two trial-hardened defense lawyers at his side: Ferdinand Gillmeister and Patrick Hinderer from Freiburg.
Registering a test center was easy
The indictment from public prosecutor Christian Schmitz is detailed: The defendant registered with the responsible Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KV) as the operator of a test center in spring 2021. At that time, according to a KV representative as a witness, this was not denied to anyone “who had signed an assurance that they would bill according to law and order”. The catch: Nobody checked the whole thing at the beginning; it was only from the billing month of July 2021 that the KV was commissioned to carry out audits, using plausibility checks and random samples. The witness did not shy away from criticizing the procedure in court: “The country initially made it very easy for itself: anyone who wanted to could settle accounts.”
In this way, a first transaction that the public prosecutor pointed out could have been fraudulent: The defendant had already billed for 8,972 antigen tests – and received the proud sum of 157,972 euros from the KV for the months of May and June 2021. Ultimately, a maximum of 7,452 tests were carried out – according to the prosecution, a clear case of fraud.
Corrected invoice in the sights of the public prosecutor’s office
But the accusation of attempted fraud is even more serious: the defendant is said to have submitted a corrected invoice via the relevant KV online portal in December 2021: for May and June, supplemented by the month of April. However, he is said to have not stated the difference of 269 tests, but rather, according to a KV representative who appeared as a witness, submitted a completely new invoice for 18,213 – the addition of 8,972 tests from the first invoice and 9,241 tests from the subsequently submitted invoice .
However, no payment was made for “reasons of limitation” and the defendant would have had to submit the invoices a few months earlier. The KV still asked the operator. In view of the information about the number of employees, the extent of the opening times and, above all, the small number of test stations, people became suspicious: “It all seemed strange to us.” It was reported.
Defense demands evidence and wants access to files
The defense lawyers strongly demanded evidence at the meeting. The KV witness was asked to hand over his file and the detective on the witness stand was instructed to carry out further investigations. The trial has been postponed and a new trial date has not yet been set.
The defendant has the allegations firmly rejected
Meanwhile, the defendant had defense attorney Hinderer read out a statement: “I did not commit any fraud in July 2021, and I did not want to commit any in December either.” That in December the KV did not add the difference of just 269 additional tests, but rather the amount The number, which was many times higher, was entirely due to the technically immature input mask in the online portal. In an email to the KV at the end of the year he even expressly pointed out that “only the difference is meant. I wasn’t deceptive.” All of the tests stated were actually carried out.
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