The Berlin public prosecutor’s office has closed its investigation against former “Bild” boss Julian Reichelt. This was announced by a spokesman.
The basis was a criminal complaint from the media group Axel Springer on suspicion of fraud. “The initial suspicion has not been confirmed by the investigation,” said a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office. The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” had previously reported on it.
Reichelt had to vacate his position as editor-in-chief of Germany’s largest tabloid newspaper in autumn 2021 and leave the group. The background to his career end at “Bild” were allegations of abuse of power in connection with consensual relationships with female employees. The journalist himself later spoke of a “smear campaign” against him and always rejected allegations.
Report and dispute over severance pay
The media group reported Reichelt last April. In addition to the criminal complaint, Springer demanded the repayment of severance pay from the former editor-in-chief in a labor dispute. However, the proceedings before the labor court surprisingly ended around two months ago with an out-of-court settlement. What exactly the parties agreed on remained unclear.
The criminal investigation continued independently after the public prosecutor’s office confirmed initial suspicion in the spring. So far, the authority has not provided any details about the allegations.
Now it was said that the publisher’s documents and files were destroyed. Springer accused Reichelt of claiming to have destroyed the documents. He pretended that he had fulfilled an important prerequisite for receiving the agreed severance payment when he left the media group.
In fact, Reichelt is said to have been asked by the publisher in connection with another legal dispute to make the documents available and not to destroy them, the public prosecutor’s office has now said. The ex-editor-in-chief is said to have complied with this request. It can therefore be assumed that the media group was aware that Reichelt still had documents. Nevertheless, he was paid the severance payment. According to the public prosecutor’s office, his claim that all documents had already been deleted could not have been the cause of the payment. “There is therefore a lack of causality required for fraud.”
Against this background, it remains unclear from the prosecutor’s perspective whether Reichelt actually intended to deceive Springer with the statement. Or whether he rather assumed that the information only referred to other documents and files anyway.
