The former finance minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Ingolf Deubel has been jailed for three-and-a-half-years for his part in the ill-conceived and financially disastrous plan partly privatize the Nürburgring.
Deubel, was convicted on 14 counts yesterday in a Koblenz court with Judge Winfried Hetger ruling that he had misled parliament after maintaining that it had been private investment that had funded the huge works undertaken at and around the iconic circuit when in reality those loans were underwritten by the state government.
Ex-circuit CEO Walter Kafitz received a suspended sentence of 19 months.
Deubel was also found to have lied to a parliamentary inquiry which was attempting to investigate the failed project – a course of events which cost the state at least 330 million euros.
The entire Nürburgring complex was sold last month to private company Capricorn, via administrators, for 77 million euros.
Deubel had pleaded not guilty since the trial began in 2012.
The court judge ruled that Deubel had knowingly endangered millions of Euros of taxpayers money at a time when he also served as chairman of the supervisory board for the state-owned Nürburgring GmbH holding company. Company chiefs from ISB and RIM, the companies which assisted Deubel in ushering public funds to the project, also received cautions as part of the verdict.
Real estate firms RIM nominally invested more than 85 million euros in the Nürburgring, that money was borrowed from investment bank ISB in loans underwritten by the state government in Rhineland-Palatinate. The judge ruled though that Deubel would clearly have known that the Nürburgring leaseholder Richter would have had little or no chance to repay the money.
With the Nürburgring staggering towards administration, it was revealed that falsified market research data had been used to justify the business plan for the project.
