Accusations “almost unbelievable”
Currywurst man Töpperwien rejects breach of trust charges
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Currywurst man Chris Töpperwien is on trial in Austria. He is accused of having paid for private purchases with company money as the managing director of a grill retailer. However, the 50-year-old protests his innocence.
“Currywurst man” Chris Töpperwien feels he is innocently accused in court. The 50-year-old entrepreneur, known from reality TV formats such as “Goodbye Germany! – The Emigrants” and “Jungle Camp”, denied the allegations at the start of his trial in Wiener Neustadt, according to the APA news agency.
As the manager of an Austrian barbecue retailer, he is said to have paid for private purchases with company money. The public prosecutor's office also accuses him of using company employees for private purposes. He also sold his employer's items, including knives, barbecue spices and charcoal, at his own expense. The charges are breach of trust and embezzlement.
According to the prosecution, Töpperwien is said to have made payments – for example in hardware stores or on the Internet – using the company account and the company card. The 50-year-old's defense attorney emphasized that some of the cases involved erroneous use of the company credit card or erroneous debits from the company account. The procedure was clumsy, but “far removed from criminal law,” said the attorney.
“That was a misclick”
The defendant said that it was common practice for him to borrow the company bus to dispose of bulky waste. “I actually didn't realize that it was a bad thing.” He paid for the petrol – as well as the bulky waste disposal – with his own money.
In two or three cases, he mistakenly chose the wrong payment option, so that the company account was debited. “That was a mistake,” said the defendant. Regarding the accusation of embezzlement, Töpperwien stated that he had paid for the knives. He had given the barbecue spices and a knife sharpener to people for social media posts. He had used products such as charcoal, oil can and spatula for Instagram stories. The defendant described the accusations as “almost unbelievable.”
