The legal reappraisal of the fraud scandal at the Stuttgart Clinic from 2012 to 2015 apparently affects more actors in Frankfurt than previously known. At that time, funds were allegedly embezzled in the treatment of Libyan war-wounded patients in Germany. In March, it became known that the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office, along with eight other people, had also brought charges against the Medical Director of the University Hospital Frankfurt, Jürgen Graf, who had been employed at the hospital in question since 2014. According to information from the Frankfurter Neue Presse, however, the comprehensive indictment also mentions the Northwest Hospital, which at that time had taken over the treatment of at least 15 war-disabled Libyan patients from Stuttgart for capacity reasons.

Monika Ganster

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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At that time, the Stuttgart Clinic is said to have transferred a lump sum of one million euros to the Frankfurt hospital in order to ensure the care of patients. This has now been confirmed by the Northwest Hospital. A spokesman also said that in connection with the treatment of foreign patients who are not insured in Germany or the EU, it is customary to make an advance payment. After completion of the treatment of the Libyans, the surplus budget of around 300,000 euros was transferred back to the Stuttgart Clinic on March 31, 2014.

External service provider to check invoices

What exactly was billed and how and, above all, on what contractual basis, is apparently still unclear in the hospital at Steinbacher Hohl. Last week, an external service provider was commissioned by the Northwest Hospital to check the proper billing of those foreign patients, the clinic said. It was only through the research of the Frankfurter Neue Presse that they became aware of the involvement in the Stuttgart clinic scandal. Internal follow-up is also made more difficult by the fact that the persons involved in 2014 are no longer employed at the Northwest Hospital.

The indictment of the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office is about the suspicion of fraud, embezzlement and, in some cases, corruption and bribery of foreign public officials. Funds amounting to more than 18 million euros are said to have been misappropriated in the course of two projects to treat war wounded from Syria and to improve medical services at a hospital in Kuwait, and around 7.8 million euros in bribes were paid to public officials.

According to the public prosecutor's office, the Stuttgart Clinic would have wrongly gained an economic advantage of at least 16.1 million euros through the acts, should the allegations be confirmed in court. A commercial criminal chamber of the Stuttgart Regional Court must now decide on the admission of the indictment, which was already filed at the beginning of March. Also at the beginning of March, the court sentenced two men who had referred Libyan patients to the hospital to prison terms of five years and two years and nine months. It was the first verdict in the clinic scandal.

In an initial statement, the lawyer of the Medical Director of the University Hospital, Jürgen Graf, had already rejected the allegations, as his client had only been employed in Stuttgart from 2014 onwards and that the contracts with Libya and Kuwait had been concluded essentially without his influence.