The Garbage Millions - Alter Markt
Between 1994 and 1999, firms profiting from Cologne's 820 million mark waste incinerator secretly funnelled money to the SPD that led the council in this town hall, laundered through fake small donation receipts. Exposed in March 2002, the scandal ended with a prison term for the incinerator's manager and suspended sentences for waste magnate Hellmut Trienekens and former city director Klaus Heugel.
Su questo luogo
The Alter Markt is Cologne's oldest square, first recorded in 922, framed by gabled houses and watched over by the 61 metre Gothic tower of the Historic Town Hall, often called the oldest town hall in Germany. It is also the stage of the city's most notorious lesson in Klüngel, the Cologne art of friends helping friends. In the 1990s the city built a huge waste incinerator in Niehl for 820 million marks, and between 1994 and 1999 the firms that profited from it, the plant builder Steinmüller and Hellmut Trienekens's waste group, sent secret money to the SPD, then the leading party in the council that meets in this town hall. To avoid publishing large donations, the cash was split into small sums booked to party members with fake receipts; the SPD council group leader later admitted to 830,000 marks. When the scheme collapsed in March 2002 he resigned and confessed, and years of trials followed: Ulrich Eisermann, manager of the incinerator company, went to prison for three years and nine months, while Klaus Heugel and Trienekens received suspended sentences. Justice on this square was once far more brutal: in 1803 the robber Mathias Weber, the Fetzer, was guillotined right here. Today the Platzjabbeck under the tower clock sticks out its tongue every hour, and across the square the copper Kallendresser bares his bottom, a mocking salute many locals read as aimed at the council.
Fatti principali
- 820 million marks — The price of the Niehl waste incinerator, the project whose suppliers paid secret money to the party leading Cologne's council.
- 830000 marks — The sum the SPD council group leader admitted receiving between 1994 and 1999, chopped into small fake donations to stay out of the public accounts.
- 45 months in prison — The prison sentence handed to Ulrich Eisermann, manager of the company running the incinerator, in 2004: three years and nine months for breach of trust and bribery.