Cologne (dpa / lnw) – A 58-year-old woman is said to have obtained almost 618,000 euros through subsidy fraud – including from pandemic and flood aid. The trial against her in the Cologne district court has been running since Monday. At the start, the accused denied the allegations. She is accused, among other things, of commercial fraud between March 2020 and April 2022.
According to the indictment, the woman is said to have initially applied for emergency corona aid from the district governments in Cologne and Düsseldorf without justification. She submitted a large number of applications with a “volume of over one million euros”. According to the indictment, she “largely covered the family’s livelihood” with the money thus obtained – even if not all applications were approved. In order to obtain the funds, the woman erected a “complex building of lies”.
Other allegations include that the 58-year-old is said to have applied for and received short-time work benefits from the Federal Employment Agency for non-existent employees. She is said to have received a total of 17,500 euros from the flood aid that was set up after the flooding caused by heavy rain in July 2021.
The accusation is based on accomplices. The process is scheduled to last another eleven days until the end of January 2023.
