A lawyer sold two of his demented client's apartments in Lehel in Munich at a significantly lower price, to his children. For this he was sentenced to a suspended sentence of two years by the lay judges of the district court in Munich for breach of trust. The verdict is not yet legally binding. He sold the apartments, which were worth 1,100,000 million and 1,300,000 million euros respectively, to his daughter and her husband for only 600,000 euros and to his son and his wife for 675,000 euros.
The lawyer had known the client, who has since died, since the 1980s because she was a close friend of his parents. She had given him power of attorney. The lawyer admitted the sale of the apartments. He stated that it wasn't his intention to "cobble something on his children". He had developed a close and friendly relationship with the victim over the years. He therefore assumed that the transfer of the apartments to his children was in accordance with their wishes. Only later did he realize that he could have achieved significantly higher prices by selling the apartments on the open market.
The jury only partially believed the accused and sees it as a mere protective claim that the objective market value of the apartments sold surprised him. Since he had already sold real estate and had been a lawyer in Munich for many years, "it can be concluded that he was at least familiar with the prices and values of real estate in Munich," according to the lay judge. At the very least, he would have had the duty, as the representative of the injured party, to obtain information about the market value of the apartments. In its judgment, the jury also goes into how people are treated. It "is to be considered an aggravating factor that the injured party (...) was already completely demented at the time of the crime and the crime was therefore committed at the expense of a person who was not able to defend himself at all."
Source: justiz.bayern.de/AG Munich, AZ: 836 Ls 231 Js 167395/16
© Fotolia
