In March, the public prosecutor’s office in Stuttgart charged the temporary “system enemy number one” with money laundering and attempted fraud: Querdenken founder Michael Ballweg. The authority, which is bound by instructions to the CDU Minister of Justice Marion Gentges, proceeded against the former computer entrepreneur with particular investigative zeal. From June 29, 2022, to April 4, 2023, Ballweg was remanded in custody for this reason in the notorious Stuttgart-Stammheim prison: more than nine months.
And now this! The Stuttgart Regional Court did not admit the charges against Ballweg. It considers them too thin to open a lawsuit.
The district court took more than half a year to consider the charges.
And in doing so, apparently determined that the prosecution’s work lacked substance. Only in cases where an acquittal is more likely than a conviction may courts choose not to institute a main trial despite an indictment.
In a case that made as many headlines as the Ballweg case, judges are unlikely to make such a decision lightly. They must have very solid reasons for not seeing probable cause against the 48-year-old.
The public prosecutor’s office had accused Ballweg of receiving donations of more than one million euros for “Querdenken-711” through public appeals since 2020 and deceiving the donors about the use. He allegedly used 500,000 euros for his own purposes and concealed the origin of the funds, as the “Südkurier” writes. In addition, a criminal tax case was still pending.
Ballweg has always denied the allegations.
To the sheet the Stuttgart public prosecutor’s office, which had shown an unbelievable pursuit zeal since beginning of the procedure, announced still on Tuesday evening to file immediate complaint before the higher regional court against the decision of the regional court.
Regardless of whether the Higher Regional Court is more politically strict than the apparently independent judges at the Regional Court or not – the slap in the face for the public prosecutor’s office is severe.
For the district court officially confirmed exactly what Ballweg’s lawyers have been saying for a long time and defamed red-green journalists and activists as “Schwurbelei”: that the accusations of the public prosecutor’s office had neither hand nor foot.
This raises the suspicion that a second accusation made by Ballweg’s lawyers is also true: that his persecution was politically motivated. The fact is that it was a clear warning shot to all government critics in Germany and, with its great signal effect, was designed to intimidate dissenters.
The lawyers accused the authorities of trampling on the principles of the rule of law. Among other things, their client had been denied the right to be heard(see here). “There is obviously an interest, although legally no longer justifiable, to keep Michael Ballweg in custody,” criticized Ballweg’s lawyer Ralf Ludwig in December 2022.
Particularly bizarre: While in Germany, for example, child molesters and murderers are released despite sentencing because the judiciary, according to its own statements, has too few resources (see here and here), at the same time these resources were sufficient for the – apparently unjustified – prosecution of one of the best-known government critics.
As gratifying as it is to see justice now served for Ballweg, there is no real reparation for the nine months he spent in prison.
The probability that the responsible public prosecutor and the responsible magistrate, both of whom according to the lawyers were extremely prosecutorial, will be investigated on initial suspicion of perverting the course of justice, as was the case with the Weimar masked judge Dettmar(see here), is admittedly low.
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