Miroslaw Strecker

Miroslaw Ryszard Strecker (* 1957 ) is a German truck driver who became known as a whistleblower . He uncovered the meat scandal in Wertingen (Bavaria) in 2007 , whereupon the Wertfleisch GmbH company was closed and its managing director was sentenced to a two-year prison term. A little later, the then Bavarian Environment Minister Werner Schnappauf ( CSU ) resigned. Strecker is often cited as an example of people who show moral courage even though they themselves suffer negative consequences.

Life

Miroslaw Strecker was born in Poland and grew up in Brandenburg. His mother was a saleswoman, his father a truck driver. He learned the trade of butcher and volunteered as a driving instructor. In 1989 he fled to West Germany via Warsaw . In 2007, the year the meat scandal was uncovered, he worked as a truck driver for a German shipping company.

Suspicion and report

In August 2007, Strecker transported meat from northern Germany to a sausage and meat product factory near Wertingen ( Bavaria ) with his truck . It struck him as strange that he should bring " K3 meat " (poor quality meat with, among other things, beef eyes and four-year-old offal) to the factory. Strecker observed how the meat dealer Wolfgang L. relabeled the inferior meat immediately after delivery and declared it to be food. On the way home he called 110 and told them what he had seen. “They told me that the police are not responsible,” Strecker reported later in court. The officials gave him the phone number for the Chamber of Commerce and Industry . When Strecker called there, he received the number of the trade association . Only then did he reach someone who felt responsible. The professional association arranged for the police to investigate the case.

An hour after his first call, Strecker was called back by the police, who told him they had found nothing. Strecker insisted on further investigations, as he was holding the delivery papers in his hands and was certain that things were not going well in Wertingen . The police then continued to investigate. Only then did the authorities react quickly and shut down operations. They found that the company had sold a total of 150 tons of meat waste to Berlin kebab manufacturers.

Convictions

The relabelled meat was apparently used from June 2006 to August 2007 mainly for the production of doner kebab in Berlin, but also in other parts of Germany.

Almost four years after Strecker's complaint, the Augsburg Regional Court sentenced two co-defendants to suspended sentences for aiding and abetting fraud. The public prosecutor's office accused the main defendant, Wolfgang L., of commercial fraud and of placing unsafe food on the market in 22 cases. The responsible public prosecutor Andreas Rossa criticized the long duration of the proceedings as "contrary to the rule of law". The responsible criminal police officer on the witness stand had to contend with considerable memory gaps. The managing director Wolfgang L. was sentenced to two years in prison without parole. He was not given a suspended sentence because he returned to the meat trade in February 2010, despite a trade ban. During a stay at a spa, Wolfgang L. complained to a woman about his financial worries and persuaded her to set up a front company for him . In this, Wolfgang L. acted as the de facto managing director. He shipped meat worth half a million euros in containers to the Comoros and the neighboring island of Mayotte .

Media processing and awards

After the scandal broke up, Miroslaw Strecker was celebrated as a "hero" in television shows (including Günther Jauch), newspapers and the news. He received several awards for his moral courage.

• In 2007, Horst Seehofer, then Federal Minister of Agriculture, presented him with the first ever Golden Plaque from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture.
• 2011 XY prize for moral courage .

Strecker later bridged the period of his unemployment with the prize money of the four courage prizes.

Personal and labor law consequences

In the year after the incident, Strecker had to undergo shoulder surgery and was on sick leave for a year. After that, the shipping company urged him to terminate himself. His forwarding agency assigned him to heavy tours in the future, with many loading stops and high-stacked pallets. “They wanted to destroy me,” Strecker told the time . In 2011 his company fired him for operational reasons. Strecker fought in court and obtained severance pay . At the time, he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “It is an unwritten law in the industry not to talk about customers. ... Perhaps the company has received pressure that they no longer want to see me on the truck. "

After an appeal by Antenne Bayern , a medium-sized company hired Strecker as a truck driver. “To advertise yourself! How social he is. Once it was, he quit me again, "he said of the time in the summer, 2013.

Today Strecker works as a bus driver for a bus company and lives in Calau in Brandenburg.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} "Not responsible": Witness criticizes authorities. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 18, 2011, accessed August 30, 2018 . 
2. ↑ 8/2007: Tagesspiegel online: Akkordausbeiner and Gammeldöner
3. ↑ Max Hägler: Kebab skewers continue to gammeln in taz, the daily newspaper of September 7, 2007
4. ↑ 8/2007: Focus online: FOOD SCANDAL: Up to 180 tons of rotten meat
5. ^ Another kebab manufacturer from Berlin bought Ekelfleisch Berliner Zeitung , September 6, 2007
6. ↑ Meat trader has to be jailed for two years, Der Spiegel , August 10, 2011
7. ↑ Civil courage makes outlaws: No protection for whistleblowers in Germany ( Memento of December 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Monitor of December 9, 2010
8. ↑ see film about Strecker at file number XY at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWiIFJGFOyU ( Memento from May 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
9. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/ Zwischen-helden-und-verraetertum-deutschland-unternehmen-wenig-um-whistleblower-zu-schuetzen/ 8686118-3.html
10. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/ Zwischen-helden-und-verraetertum-deutschland-unternehmen-wenig-um-whistleblower-zu-schuetzen/ 8686118-3.html Die Zeit, August 2013
11. ↑ see http://www.moz.de/artikel-ansicht/dg/0/1/990086