"Iron bending mafia"

Verdicts after four hours instead of five days of trial

The defendants all worked in the iron bending industry and evaded millions of euros in social security contributions(Bild: Christian Jauschowetz)

Exploitation of hundreds of employees. "The price pressure is paid for by the economic damage," said one of the lawyers for four defendants who had evaded 3.2 million euros in social security contributions in the Linz "iron-bending mafia". Confessions shortened the trial considerably.

The monster trial in the "iron-bending mafia" at the Linz Regional Court was shortened from five days to four hours thanks to the confessions of the four defendants. The three Kosovars (41 to 43 years old) and one Romanian (37) revealed the schemes used to register and deregister workers in order to save on social security contributions.

Insight into the practice of the fraudsters
Two of the defendants were company bosses themselves and sometimes had up to 500 people working on construction sites. "Because the workers were registered, there was no need to fear undeclared worker checks," explained one lawyer. It was common practice for companies through which many workers were registered to go bankrupt and thus forfeit their insurance claims. It was also common for workers to be deregistered after a week if there were no checks.

Exaggeration became a stumbling block
However, because the company bosses had exaggerated, the health insurance company noticed that one company had an extreme increase in cancellations after one week. The damages were set at 3.2 million euros, the public prosecutor spoke of 3.5 million euros.

Former bosses must serve time
The two former company bosses each received three years in prison, one of which was "harsh", while their two assistants got off with a one-year conditional sentence - all sentences were final. The fact that they all confessed, that the pre-trial proceedings were very long and that it was the first conviction for all of them was a mitigating factor. Criminal financial proceedings with claims of up to three million euros are still to come.