Osnabrueck, Dusseldorf It was an unusual appearance for ex-Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU). Accompanied by two bodyguards, the Union faction vice entered room 272 of the Osnabrück district court on Tuesday at 11 a.m. Spahn took a seat opposite the presiding judge Norbert Carstensen. Then he spoke about the beginning of the corona pandemic.
“We were in an acute shortage and urgently needed masks,” said Spahn. In order to meet the demand, the federal government accepted enormous costs. That got hundreds of entrepreneurs on the scene who offered their goods. Spahn said he made “40 to 50 decisions” about mask procurement – every day.
The man about whom the ex-minister now had to explain himself in court was sitting in the dock to his left. The 32-year-old Hendrik Holt sat motionless and stared straight ahead while Spahn assured the judge that he could not remember either a conversation or a meeting with Holt.
Holt made history as a wind power scammer. In May 2022, the Osnabrück Regional Court sentenced him to seven and a half years in prison for selling projects to the energy companies CEZ, SSE and Enel that only existed on paper. Now Holt is back on trial for attempted fraud. He is said to have offered Spahn millions of FFP masks in spring 2020, although they never existed.
At the time, Holt was considered a child prodigy in the wind industry. The supposedly successful young entrepreneur from Emsland wore a Rolex, drove a Bentley Mulsanne and had his communications office quote him as having a false doctorate about alleged projects in Andorra and Zimbabwe.
The former Federal Minister of Health came with bodyguards to the hearing room of the Osnabrück Regional Court.
(Photo: dpa)
In the spring of 2020, Holt apparently wanted to expand his business. At the end of March 2020, he received an email from Holt’s chief lobbyist Benedikt Pöttering, Spahn told the court on Tuesday. Pöttering, son of the CDU politician and former EU Parliament President Hans-Gert Hermann Pöttering, founded the lobby company “Holt Energy AG” with Holt.
Today the mail is an important piece of evidence, Judge Carstensen read it on Tuesday. Pöttering wrote to Spahn that he had the opportunity to get several million masks. Holt and he stand for “the reliability of the delivery and the goods”. Pöttering closed the email to his first-name friend Spahn: “Hope we can help.”
>> Read here: “Fake projects”: Wind fraudster Hendrik Holt has to go to prison for seven years
Holten and Pöttering wanted to be paid generously for their help. They made the then Minister of Health an offer of 42 million euros, of which 17 million euros were to be paid in advance. According to Spahn, he had “received hundreds of times” offers like this at the time.
However, prosecutors are convinced that Holt was “neither willing nor able” to supply the masks. The impostor is said to have only been concerned with “collecting the required advance payment without consideration”. One charge is therefore attempted fraud in a particularly serious case.
Hendrik Holt: “Honest business”
On April 5, Spahn rejected the mask deal. Because “at the time there was no longer any need for further FFP2 masks”, the CDU politician said in court on Tuesday that he had not dealt with the offer any further. Spahn: “For me, the e-mail was the end of the whole thing. That was the end of it for me.”
A week after Spahn’s cancellation, police officers stormed Holt’s luxury suite in Berlin’s luxury hotel Adlon and arrested him for his invented wind farm business.
In the process two years later, the range of masks was also a side issue. Holt claimed he even met with Spahn. And that the minister had indicated to him that he wanted to profit from the deal. Spahn then filed a complaint himself.
The ex-minister emphasized again on Tuesday that the meeting described by Holt never took place. In addition to attempted fraud, the public prosecutor accuses Holt of false suspicion and defamation of a person in political life. Lobbyist Pöttering, on the other hand, was merely a “purposeless tool” that Holt used.
Holt first commented on the charges on Monday. He assured that the mask offer was about “a normal, honest business”. With a view to the alleged meeting with Spahn, however, Holt was less sure. He can no longer say when it took place. He also no longer knows exactly what Spahn said.
The hearing will continue on March 20th.
More: The presumed fraudster Hendrik Holt lived in this luxury