Hans-Josef Blumensatt is still full of praise today: "He was a very committed employee, hardworking and competent." He was considered a luminary in his field nationwide.

This is what Alexander B. heard from his former boss as a defendant before the Frankfurt district court.

Blumensatt was Hessian Attorney General from 2009 to 2015 - and according to the investigations in this authority, B. developed a system during this time that gave him enormous illegal additional income and caused serious damage to the reputation of the judiciary.

Helmut Schwan

Freelance author in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The trial against the former head of the "Central Office for Combating Property Crimes and Corruption in the Healthcare System" is trying to work through one of the biggest judicial scandals in Hesse.

The 55-year-old B., for years the face of the public prosecutor's office as press spokesman, is accused of commercial corruption.

He is said to have received bribes totaling around 350,000 euros and evaded taxes.

According to his confession, the sum of the payments he received in return for orders from two companies was significantly higher.

Because the affair was only discovered in 2020, the actions before 2015 are statute-barred.

Just like B. on the previous day of the trial, his co-defendant friend and former business partner essentially admitted the prosecutor's allegations on Wednesday.

Bernhard A. confirmed that in 2009 he had followed B.'s wish to have him participate first in one third and later in two thirds of the profits of the joint company Meditransparent.

On behalf of the public prosecutor's office, this checked bills from doctors, hospitals and pharmacists for attempted fraud and invoiced the fees of the experts used by the judiciary.

Corruption prevention in the judiciary was only discussed in 2019

He never doubted that the orders to his company were correct, said A. He did not assume that B. - as the public prosecutor claims - inflated them in order to participate in them through profit-sharing.

After all, the businessman continues, he thought such processes would be strictly controlled in the judiciary.

Nevertheless, the payments to B. were a big mistake.

The fact that the "Central Office" with its hundreds of cases against doctors was in fact hardly checked remains a tricky question for the third power.

Former Attorney General Blumensatt could not answer them on Wednesday.

As far as he remembers, there was no four-eyes principle when placing orders with external service providers or experts in those years – this was only introduced as a result of the scandal.

As the state audit office researched, a “small internal audit” took place for the general public prosecutor's office in 2013, but nobody noticed what was going on in the central office.

Whether a similar test was carried out in 2015 and with what results is one of the many mysteries of this case.

The primary goal of internal auditing was to optimize processes, said Blumensatt.

Possible corruption in the judiciary was never an issue - corruption prevention in the judiciary was only addressed in a 2019 decree.

Complaints about B. never reached him, said the country's former chief investigator.

The high costs of investigating doctors, generated by the expert fees, were never an issue in his authority or in meetings with the ministry.

In the end, the treasury paid to a large extent.

"Total madness"

The main defendant Alexander B. emphasized again in court on Wednesday that he alone is responsible for the situation in which he now finds himself.

He himself brought about the "financial difficulties" from which he thought he could only get out through illegal income.

According to him, the greatest burden was the support of his partner at the time, who was not able to handle money.

At first she didn't know anything about his illegal side income, she wouldn't have wanted it either.

The woman, who has since died, started the investigation in 2019 with a complaint against B.

When asked by the public prosecutor whether his life at the time could be described as luxurious, B. answered in the affirmative.

Over the years he bought four condominiums in Frankfurt.

In hindsight, everything was "complete madness," he said, but stuck to his statement that he would have placed the orders with the service companies if he hadn't received a bribe.

The process continues.