Accused of Embezzlement While Robbed – the Peculiar Case Against Reiner Fuellmich

Accused of Embezzlement While Robbed – the Peculiar Case Against Reiner Fuellmich

by Djamila le Pair, Pinch of Soot
November 9, 2024

 

The accusation that the German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich embezzled money from his own foundation, the Corona Investigative Committee (CIC), has slowly but steadily been exposed as an inversion of reality, since court proceedings started in January 2024. It is not CIC, but Fuellmich himself who has been robbed.

Fuellmich is said to have embezzled €700,000 from CIC’s donations. The money, however (plus an additional €450,000) is sitting right under everybody’s noses in a German bank account, as Edgar Siemund, one of Fuellmich’s five lawyers, exclaimed in frustration at the end of the 36th court hearing, on Friday, 1 November.

The State Prosecution of Göttingen (where the hearings take place), however, ignores this fact. Neither does she seem interested in prosecuting the holder of the account, Marcel Templin, for illegally obtaining the funds, which consist of the majority (€1,158,000) of the €1.3 million that Fuellmich’s house sold for in 2022.

Taz, January 31, 2024.

 

Politically Motivated

The political motive behind the criminal case against Fuellmich, who co-founded the CIC with three other lawyers (Dr. Justus Hoffman, Antonia Fischer and Viviane Fischer) has been getting more evident, with every court hearing.

In fact, Fuellmich had been more than an eyesore for large enterprises and the German state for decades, as he legally battled (mostly successfully) the financial giant Deutsche Bank (mortgage cases), Kühne & Nagel (bribes), and Volkswagen (emissions scandal).

Since CIC’s was founded in July 2020, however, the German government has invested (and is still investing) a considerable amount of time, money, and resources with the sole aim to silence and destroy Fuellmich financially, professionally and psychologically for once and for all.

The corona crisis transformed Fuellmich into a potential three-tiered threat to the official corona narrative and the longer term implementation of the Great Reset. Not only did Fuellmich provide, with CIC, an online platform for scientists and experts critical of the government’s corona narrative voiced their views and scientific findings, he made several attempts to get a class action suit going abroad (in New York, New Zealand, South Africa and twice in Canada) to fight governments’ abuse of human rights, the damage caused by corona measures and more specifically, the use of the PCR-test as a diagnostic tool. His third offensive was political, as the national electoral candidate for the newly established political party, Die Basis, in the run up to the German 2022 elections.

A dossier, authored by one of Germany’s intelligence services and leaked to Fuellmich’s lawyer Dr. Christof Miseré, contains an order given in 2021 to find, or alternatively “create” grounds to criminally prosecute the lawyer to make sure he would never be able hold a political position.

Not Embezzlement but Loans

The €700,000 – made up of two loans of €200,000 and €500,000 – were part of three loans for which Viviane Fischer, Reiner Fuellmich and the CIC bookkeeper signed lending contracts. Viviane Fischer borrowed €100,000. In addition, €1,000,000 was invested in Gold.

The loans and gold purchase were meant to safeguard a large part of the incoming donations against confiscation or blocking of accounts by the German government – a measure that authorities had already used against several critics of the corona narrative in 2020.

Betrayal

Viviane Fischer turned on Fuellmich publicly, on 2 September 2022, and expelled him from CIC, without informing him. On the 21st of September she announced – again publicly, through the CIC platform – that he had embezzled €700,000, not mentioning her own loan.

Since early 2021, Justus Hoffman and Antonia Fischer had no longer been part of CIC, but were informed of Fuellmich’s alleged malfeasance by Viviane Fischer, in May or June 2022. Together, and joined by former member of parliament, Wolfgang Wodarg, they publicly discussed Fuellmich’s alleged crime during a couple of CIC broadcasts, without offering Fuellmich the opportunity to address the allegations.

Defamation Campaign

Because Fuellmich was only arrested and imprisoned in October 2023 (after being kidnapped from Mexico) and the court proceedings started as late as January 2024, both main and alternative media had ample time to publish the false accusations of embezzlement and make a big impact on public opinion.

Only during the course of the court hearings, did a different picture start to emerge. As main stream media is not, or no longer present during the hearings, this ‘other picture’ is ignored by main stream press.

Office of the Hafenanwälte: Antonia Fischer, Dr. Justus Hoffman and Marcel Templin.

Ever Changing Charges

A brief overview of the (adjusted) charge may be help to understand this intertwined and multi-player case:

  • Accusation: Whitewashing

An initial attempt to prosecute Fuellmich for whitewashing donations had failed in the period June–August 2022. Two (chief) state prosecutors (one in Göttingen, one in Berlin) both found that the money had been used according to the activities and goals the CIC listed on their website: providing free (Covid-19 critical) information through online broadcasts.

  • Accusation: Embezzlement

State prosecutor Simon Phillip John was subsequently transferred from Hannover to Göttingen and accepted the case. The accusations (18 in total) were submitted to him by CIC co-founders Dr. Justus Hoffman and Antonia Fischer and their law practice partner, Marcel Templin.

Templin had nothing to do with CIC, but he had initially helped Fuellmich to collect funds and register clients to start the class action suit. The partnership stopped after Templin sent out an email in which all class action suit signees had been copied in openly, instead of blind copied.

During the trial it has become clear that state prosecutor John was in high-frequent email and other contact with Hoffman, Templin and Antonia Fischer, as well as with Viviane Fischer. No written records exist of their telephone conversations which, in the case of Antonia Fischer alone, amount to at least 30. What’s more, Fuellmich’s lawyers claim the language used in the charges pressed by the three lawyers, contains phrases and terms typical for State Prosecutors. In short, the charges seem to have been formulated in close cooperation with Niedersachsen’s Prosecution Services.

  • Accusation: Sham loan contracts

The five judges handling the case dismissed 16 of the 18 charges, but accepted the embezzlement charge for the €200,000 and €500,000 loans – listed as two separate charges.

After the defence team produced the signed contracts for the loans – of which State Prosecutor John said that he had ‘forgotten’ to include them, – the embezzlement claim became difficult to sustain. Chairing judge Schindler then decided that the loan contracts had no official status and should be considered as sham contracts.

This new view crumbled, too, once it transpired that CIC’s registration as a foundation had never been completed. What’s more, with the amount of time that had elapsed since pre-registration, it was no longer possible to ever get it registered. Since CIC would have to be considered a civil law partnership in which each of the partners were eligible to spend the organisation’s money as they saw fit, there was no obligation to make contracts. Therefore, the contracts could be not be considered to be sham contracts.

  • Accusation: No intention to pay back the loan

Parallel to the sham contract accusation ran the assumption that Fuellmich never intended to pay back the €700,000. After hearing the testimonies of three witnesses, spontaneously invited by the defence team in July and August 2024, which stated the opposite, this assumption, too, had to be retracted.

  • Accusation: Loan was not kept available for spending

The latest interpretation of the charge against Fuellmich was that he should have kept the money available at all times. Fuellmich had invested the money in upgrading his house in Göttingen, since he and his wife intended to sell the house. They were planning to move to their ranch in California, from where he would run both his German and Californian practice. The house was paid off and investing the money in his property would keep it safe from the overreaching arm of the German government, it was assumed. After the sale of the house, the money would be returned to CIC.

The fact that the €100,000 borrowed by Viviane Fischer had also not been available for instant pay-outs, and had not been backed by real estate or other assets did not pose a problem to the court. It sufficed that her husband is known to be wealthy, even thought she used the loan in part to pay off a debt to her husband.

A Million Dollar Robbery

When the house was indeed sold, the solicitor transferred only about €140,000 of the €1,300,000 sale’s price to Fuellmich’s account. The other €1,158,000 was – unbeknown to Fuellmich – transferred to the account of Marcel Templin, making it impossible for Fuellmich to pay back the loan.

During the testimony of A.B., it transpired that Marcel Templin and Dr. Justus Hoffman had pressured both the solicitor and the buyer into facilitating this transaction. So far, neither the State Prosecutor, nor Antonia Fischer and Dr. Justus Hoffman have made any attempt to retrieve the money from Templin. Fuellmich’s own attempt is still being processed.

Not having a loan available at the drop of a hat, is hardly a crime that justifies kidnapping a suspect for. It is not grave enough to keep a man in jail while his trial is ongoing, let alone to shackle him and keep him in solitary confinement for five months.

The State Prosecution Services must have known the case had become untenable and that something had to change, as indeed something did during the 37th court hearing – which will be the topic of the next and upcoming article on this platform.


Petition for Reiner Fuellmich:  https://www.freereinerfuellmich.org/

Write to Reiner Fuellmich:

JVA Rosdorf
Dr. Reiner Fuellmich
Am Grossen Sieke 8
37124 Rosdorf Germany

  • Letters, cards and postcards are allowed
  • No glitter on the envelope
  • No stamps or money in the envelope
  • Do not send books or any other objects, they will be refused
  • Do not write about the criminal proceedings against Reiner Fuellmich, although scanning on his incoming post seems to have eased up.
  • Put your name on each page of your letter and number the pages. If they do check the mail, at least Reiner will know the order of your writing and can see if pages are missing.

 

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Cover image source: Pinch of Soot