The trial of the suspected multi-million dollar fraud in Corona rapid test centers operated by MediCan began on Thursday in front of the Bochum regional court.
The prosecutors are convinced that between March and April the 48-year-old managing director of the company settled multiple times the number of tests actually carried out with the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians;
the prosecution assumes in their indictment of 980,000 overbilled tests in the period.
Pure burger
Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.
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The entrepreneur, who operated more than 70 MediCan test sites throughout Germany, took advantage of the fact that, due to the pandemic-related peculiarities, there was no immediate need for evidence that the tests were actually carried out.
On top of that, he is said to have wrongly charged the individual tests as a medical service provider and thus billed at a higher price and reported material costs that should not have occurred to him at all.
According to the indictment, the total damage amounts to 25 million euros.
Defense attorney rejects allegations
The second accused - the managing director's 26-year-old son - is charged with aiding and abetting fraud.
In his function as the formal managing director of MediCan, he recognized, according to the indictment, at the latest after the March remuneration, that the tests had not been properly billed.
Nevertheless, he had accepted that the following billing would also not proceed properly.
The two defendants did not want to comment on the matter at the moment.
However, the father's defense attorney issued a statement in which he essentially dismissed the allegations on behalf of his client.
The accounts are correct - albeit with a certain degree of fuzziness.
The number of billed tests largely corresponds to the number of tests carried out.