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In October 2017, the Archdiocese of Freiburg admitted that it had not properly paid employee contributions to the legal pension plan for years.
The prosecution investigated, but announced in October 2018 that it had not discovered any criminally relevant behavior such as fraud or breach of trust. Therefore, no preliminary investigation has been initiated.
However, the Deutsche Rentenversicherung and the DRV Baden-Württemberg examined the cases and came to the conclusion that the Archdiocese of Freiburg must pay 10.8 million euros. According to the Catholic Archdiocese, the sum consists of regular late payments of around 6 million euros and another 4.8 million euros in late fees.
Went lightly
The matter ends halfway lightly for the archdiocese, which had set aside an amount in the triple-digit millions for fear of a significantly higher additional payment.
“The comparatively high provision that the archdiocese had included in its balance sheet in 2017 to cover potentially threatening risks can now be reversed for the most part,” he said now.
Therefore, the pension insurance audits focused primarily on the question of whether all mandatory social security contributions and associated wage tax had been correctly determined and paid in the archdiocese. The diocese writes on its website that there were legislative changes in the field of part-time marginal workers in 1999 and 2003 that were not implemented consistently in the context of the church. These deviations were not first noticed until May 2017.
“Fact fault”
Archbishop Stephan Burger admitted that mistakes had been made in his diocese and rightly objected: “We have taken many steps to correct these mistakes and we will also ensure that such mistakes are avoided in the future.”
According to its own statement, the Archdiocese of Freiburg has commissioned an independent auditing company to examine and adjust administrative processes “in order to discover possible sources of error by checking routines.”
