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Postal delivery by bicycle (symbolic image)
Photo: Christoph Hardt / Panama Pictures / IMAGO
A former employee of Deutsche Post is said not to have delivered several thousand letters in Papenburg, but to have hoarded them at his home. After an anonymous tip on January 2, the company called in the police, a spokeswoman told Deutsche Post AG on Tuesday in Hamburg. The »Ostfriesen-Zeitung« was the first to report.
The spokeswoman did not provide information on the exact scope of the withheld letters and the period of time. According to the newspaper's research, there are said to be around 30,000 letters and additional magazines that were not delivered over a period of four years and were stored in the postal employee's home. According to the company spokeswoman, the postal employee no longer works for the company. He had already agreed to a termination agreement.
Consignments are forwarded to recipients with an explanatory letter
A spokesman for the police in Emsland confirmed that investigations had been initiated. "There are mountains of mail that need to be looked through," he said. However, he did not give details.
According to Swiss Post, the items found are now carefully inspected by Deutsche Post and forwarded to the recipients with an explanatory letter. "If this is not possible in individual cases, the consignments will be returned to the original senders with an explanatory letter," said the Swiss Post spokeswoman.
Most recently, a postal employee in Austria was sentenced to ten months' probation for abuse of office because, according to his own statements, he had failed to deliver around 14,000 letters and 263 official documents.
The man had hoarded the letters from June 2022 to April 2023 in his apartment, in his car and in a locker at the delivery base. He justified the act with work overload, which had led to alcohol consumption and also private problems.
SWE/dpa