Max Strauss

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Max Strauss (left)

Max Strauss (born May 24, 1959 in Munich ; actually Maximilian Josef Strauss ) is a German lawyer and the eldest son of the former Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU Chairman Franz Josef Strauss .

Life

Strauss, whose younger siblings Franz Georg Strauss (* 1961) and Monika Hohlmeier (* 1962) are also known, did a banking apprenticeship after graduating from Dante-Gymnasium in his home town of Munich and then studied law there . Until June 2003 he worked as a lawyer in a renowned Munich law firm on Wittelsbacherplatz . After the death of his father, Franz Josef Strauss, he continued to run the family business. Max Strauss is divorced. He has two daughters from his marriage to Gabriele Strauss.

He lives (as of March 2016) near Dresden in the listed Friedensburg in Radebeul and works there as a general representative of a medical technology company.

WABAG affair - aiding and abetting investment fraud

From 1995 to 1999 Strauss worked as a lawyer for the Munich-based investment consultancy "Wirtschaftanalyse und Beratung AG" (WABAG with the project companies Trentec + Trentec II AG, Biokraftwerk AG, Kompact AG), which has been promoting recycling projects in the eastern German federal states since 1991 and around 5,000 investors had brought around 100 million euros. On April 16, 2004, he was sentenced in this connection for aiding and abetting fraud in three cases to a fine of 300,000 euros, which he was to pay in 20 monthly installments. The comparatively mild punishment came about through a pre-negotiated agreement (" deal "), according to which Strauss pleaded guilty to a limited extent. He justified this with a progressive illness. Some of the investors announced civil damages suits against Strauss. On July 19, 2006, he was sentenced by the Regional Court of Munich I to pay € 51,129 in damages to an investor.

Maxwell affair

Since 1995, the arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber has been investigating Strauss on suspicion of untaxed commission payments. According to the responsible public prosecutor in Augsburg , when a numbered account was found in Switzerland, this allegation became known as the Maxwell affair. In December 1995, proceedings were initiated against Strauss on suspicion of tax evasion , and in May 2003 the charges were admitted to the Augsburg Regional Court . Thereafter, Strauss voluntarily returned his admission to the bar for health reasons. From September 2003 he was in inpatient treatment for severe depression at the psychiatric university clinic on Munich's Nussbaumstrasse. His lawyers repeatedly emphasized that their client had suffered from the years of investigations and eventually collapsed. Strauss had been warned of a house search in January 1996. According to his own account, a hard drive secured from his laptop had been infected with a computer virus and deleted immediately beforehand . When the public prosecutor later wanted to have her examined further, she could no longer be found in the hands of a private expert, as were the data backup tapes that were also confiscated . This disappearance of important evidence, which the public prosecutor cannot explain, led to unfriendly comments in the German press. The Augsburg regional court , chaired by Maximilian Hofmeister, saw in a first judgment of July 15, 2004 the charge of tax evasion amounting to 5.2 million as proven; the question of whether Strauss had received the money was declared irrelevant. Strauss was sentenced to three years and three months in prison. In 2005, however, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the judgment and the arrest warrant on appeal and referred the matter back to the Augsburg Regional Court for renewed hearing. In the opinion of the BGH, the findings on the defendant's untaxed income are "incomplete and not based on a viable factual basis". In addition, the question of whether the money actually flowed to Strauss is of decisive legal importance. In the new edition of the trial, on August 6, 2007, Max Strauss was acquitted of the charge of tax evasion before the Augsburg regional court because of insufficient evidence. In his judgment, the presiding judge Manfred Prexl said: "There was never any direct evidence". Strauss received compensation for a house search.

Temporary attachment of the family vault

The Münchner Abendzeitung reported on January 21, 2004 that the crypt of the Strauss family in Rott am Inn and property of Max Strauss had been seized. Half of the grave belongs to Max Strauss and half to an aunt. The seizure caused great outrage in the CSU. Edmund Stoiber stated that regardless of the legal situation, he considered the seizure of the crypt to be disrespectful. State Parliament President Alois Glück (CSU) called the process "instinctless and unbearable". The CSU parliamentary group unanimously demanded that the seizure of the crypt be reversed. After massive criticism from its own ranks, Bavaria's Finance Minister Kurt Faltlhauser apologized to the Strauss family on January 26, 2004 for the "misunderstandings that had arisen". He did this in a written declaration "on behalf of the tax authorities", but admitted no personal errors. The Munich auditor Werner Wenzel, who worked for Max Strauss, announced on the same day that the Munich central tax office had informed him by telephone about the lifting of the seizure. The SPD and the Greens demanded Faltlhauser's resignation in a current hour on January 27, 2004 in the Bavarian state parliament. "We do not need a lying baron as finance minister," stated Green Party leader Margarete Bause . Faltlhauser had denied the weekend before that the tax authorities had demanded money from the Strauss family for the release of the seized grave site. However, the opposite emerged from a letter from the tax office.

Indictment of fraudulent proceedings

According to a report by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Augsburger Allgemeine , there was a new charge against Max Strauss in 2009. This is pending at the commercial criminal chamber of the district court Munich I , as a court spokesman confirmed. This is apparently based on contradictions between Strauss' statements in criminal proceedings and in civil proceedings.

Strauss injunction against Wilhelm Schlötterer

In 2009 the retired Bavarian tax officer Wilhelm Schlötterer published a non-fiction book. During his professional career in the 1970s, Schlötterer insisted on the influence of top CSU politicians in favor of celebrities and wealthy friends in tax matters. According to his statements, criminal proceedings and civil service disciplinary proceedings all revealed that he had behaved lawfully. The book covered some of the events that he criticized. Max Strauss filed a criminal complaint , sued for an omission and won this case in February 2013 (Az. 28 O 773/11). Wilhelm Schlötterer appealed against the judgment.

Strauss also denied Schlötterer's statement that he had tried to transfer 300 million marks from his father's inheritance to Luxembourg.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography: Max Strauss , Berliner Morgenpost , December 14, 2003
  2. ↑ Max Strauss divorce! Picture taken December 6, 2008
  3. ↑ zeit.de March 30, 2016
  4. ↑ Mission @ Home: Strauss-Sohn works for millionaire in Radebeul on YouTube , with numerous interior shots of the Friedensburg (as of 2016)
  5. ↑ WABAG, Trentec + Trentec II AG, Biokraftwerk AG, Kompact AG , Specialist Lawyer Hotline, May 1, 2005
  6. ^ Wabag judgment: Max Strauss must pay , n-tv , July 19, 2003
  7. ↑ Paragraph “The vanished Strauss hard drive” , SPIEGELonline February 5, 2008
  8. ↑ BGH Az .: 5 StR 65/05
  9. ↑ a b acquittal for Max Strauss sueddeutsche.de, 6 August 2007
  10. ^ Acquittal for Max Strauss , Focus Online, August 6, 2007
  11. ↑ Werner Biermann, Strauss. The rise and fall of a family. Rowohlt, Berlin 2006, page 341
  12. ^ The tax office temporarily seizes the crypt of Franz Josef Strauss , RP Online , January 21, 2004
  13. ↑ Albert Schäffer: Strauss-Crypt saved - seizure repealed , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 22, 2004
  14. ↑ Peter Fahrenholz: Stoiber declares the crypt affair ended , sueddeutsche.de, January 27, 2004
  15. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 19, 2009: Indictment against Max Strauss
  16. ↑ a b for example in favor of Franz Beckenbauer : Nobody can separate good friends
  17. ↑ sueddeutsche.de January 18, 2013: Max Strauss wants to defend his father's honor
  18. ↑ Max Strauss wins legal dispute over inheritance issues
  19. ↑ Abendzeitung: “Die next Abrechnung” , July 21, 2013, accessed on November 4, 2013
  20. ↑ Speculation around 300 million marks in cash - Max Strauss rejects money transfer allegations . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . June 27, 2012
  21. ↑ Egmont R. Koch : The millionaire puzzle. In: Stern . No. 27, June 28, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Strauss, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strauss, Maximilian Josef (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and oldest son of Franz Josef Strauss
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich