Peter Vogt (Public Prosecutor)

Peter Vogt (* 1957 in the Sauerland ) is a German public prosecutor .

Life

Born in Sauerland Vogt studied in Bonn and later worked at the Prosecutor Halberstadt , the Attorney General's Office in Naumburg and then in Berlin, where he, among other border guard accused.

Vogt had been working at the Central Office for Combating Child Pornography in Saxony-Anhalt since 1998. From 1999 he headed the authority as chief public prosecutor and in this function was significantly involved in the implementation of several large proceedings against child pornography rings, in which tens of thousands of suspects were identified nationally and internationally and hundreds of criminal proceedings were initiated, and in which new investigative strategies were used in Germany . Operation Marcy became particularly well known in 2003. The operations are considered a milestone in the fight against child pornography, and Vogt himself has since been considered a “star investigator” and one of the most prominent investigators in Germany. In 2005 the Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter awarded him the Bul le Mérite award for his services .

Vogt's measures in the course of Operation Mikado in 2006 were controversial , during which data from more than 20 million credit cards were checked in a previously unique cooperation between 14 banks. 322 suspects were identified, around 10% of whom were repeat offenders. The Federal Constitutional Court rejected a complaint against the measure due to a lack of prospects of success, as the proportionality had been preserved.

In June 2007, Vogt became the first public prosecutor to initiate proceedings for child abuse based on what was going on in the virtual world of Second Life . Operation Himmel , which he helped initiate in the same year , which extended to 70 countries and identified more than 12,000 suspects in Germany, was partially viewed by investigators as a failure.

Vogt himself complained in 2007 about the lack of sustainable procedural success:

“Child pornography on the Internet is like a hydra. If you cut off one head, two new ones will grow back. We lost the fight against child pornography. "

- Peter Vogt

In September 2009, Vogt announced his resignation as head of the authority for 2010 and justified this with "untenable conditions" in the police headquarters, which would have led to a massive investigation backlog. Due to a lack of staff in the Saxony-Anhalt police force, many proceedings against people who were to be charged with possession of child pornographic material threatened to fail due to the statute of limitations. In some cases, data carriers were returned to the accused after one and a half years without the investigating police authorities having viewed the material. Interior Minister Holger Hövelmann (SPD) then announced a reallocation of personnel and material resources in favor of the central office. The number of investigators and employees in the evaluation and coordination office for child pornography in the State Criminal Police Office is to be increased by around 50% in the short term.