The Oldenburg public prosecutor’s office is investigating 110 suspects for subsidy fraud with Corona aid. The former Wiesmoor mayoral candidate Christian Rademacher-Jelten is said to play a central role. What is known about this.
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Oldenburg/Northwest – The Corona aid was supposed to be a rescue package for the self-employed and companies that had to deal with massive drops in sales during the pandemic – quickly and easily. But the economic aid was apparently an invitation to fraud: There are now at least 110 suspects from Oldenburg and the entire northwest who are said to have committed subsidy fraud on a large scale using precisely this Corona aid. The investigations in the mammoth case are being conducted by the Central Office for Economic Criminal Matters of the Oldenburg Public Prosecutor’s Office. The focus is on the former Wiesmoor mayoral candidate and management consultant Christian Rademacher-Jelten.
450 cases
There are at least 450 cases, and the damage caused is said to be in the millions, according to a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office when asked by our editorial team. The accused come from industries that were particularly affected by the corona measures during the pandemic. The public prosecutor’s office gives a few examples: the catering industry, beauty salons, the event and media industry, nutritional advice, physiotherapy, the hotel industry and hairdressers. “All industries are well represented among the accused,” said a public prosecutor.
Doubtful invoices
The workload is enormous. “Due to the corona pandemic, the number of subsidy fraud proceedings has increased significantly. We are clearly noticing this and saw it coming,” said the spokesperson. Individual proceedings are currently being separated from the main proceedings, which have only one file number and involve these 110 accused around Christian Rademacher-Jelten, and crimes are being brought to trial. In Oldenburg, for example, a restaurateur has already had to answer to the court for allegedly obtaining subsidy aid amounting to around 346,000 euros without authorization.
The accused, who are being investigated in the Rademacher-Jelten complex, are said to have largely inflated their fixed costs in the applications, concealed sales and submitted fictitious invoices. Rademacher-Jelten is said to have filled out the funding applications for the accused and submitted dubious invoices through his company.
Money laundering
In order for the offence of subsidy fraud to be committed, the aid does not have to have been paid out. “False information in the application is sufficient,” said the spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office. What is also considered subsidy fraud: If the economic aid was not used for its intended purpose, but for other things such as private purchases. In addition to subsidy fraud, there is the accusation of money laundering if the accused, knowing that they were not entitled to the Corona aid, passed the money on to third parties in order to conceal it.
Smooth sums
The investigators caught the suspected subsidy fraudsters through a report from the NBank. The Lower Saxony development bank noticed numerous applications for Corona emergency aid, November and December aid and bridging aid due to implausible information in the applications. For example, fixed costs for the companies were enormously high and had risen sharply compared to comparable months, but were not supported by invoices. There were also many invoices, for example for services and tradesmen, that were issued as a flat rate and without identifying individual activities or material costs. Flat invoices for 20,000 euros for digitization and hygiene concepts were popular, for example.
Currently in custody
The investigations were started after the NBank’s report by the Central Criminal Investigation Department in Osnabrück, which quickly found evidence of a structural approach with criminal relevance. These investigations are not yet complete: the number of suspects and cases may continue to rise.
Christian Rademacher-Jelten, who plays a central role in the case, is currently serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for aiding and abetting drug trafficking. Through his management consultancy, he rented out a former car dealership on the main street in Wiesmoor for the cultivation of marijuana plants.
