Viennese kindergartens – millions in taxes for horses, marbles and locks

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The latest scandal surrounding the Minibambini kindergartens in Vienna is not an isolated case: operators have repeatedly enriched themselves with millions in financing for years and wallow in luxury for this money.

When Vienna made admission to kindergarten free in 2009, it required masses of new childcare places – for some apparently the opportunity to make money at the expense of parents, children and taxpayers. In 2016, a first wave of abuses surfaced. The biggest scandal at the time concerned the group “Alt Wien” with 33 kindergartens in Vienna.

According to the audit reports, 6.6 million euros in subsidies were misused at the time. The operator donated the money to the daughter’s ballet school and the son’s riding school. A family castle in Bad Aussee was also co-financed – it continues to function as a holiday camp for the operating family, although “Alt Wien” went bankrupt in 2016 and 2300 children needed new childcare places almost overnight.

marble fountains and libraries
The joke about the bankruptcy of “Alt Wien”: ten of the kindergartens were taken over by the association “Oasis of the Child”, behind which no one else was hiding but Hassan M., known to the authorities for misuse of subsidies. He was well known to the MA 10. He had previously applied for funding from another kindergarten for marble interiors – including a lavish fountain – and a posh library.

The authorities found out about the man because he was clearly too clumsy. For example, he set the area of ​​​​the childcare to so many square meters that it exceeded the total area of ​​​​the kindergarten.

The wave of scandals in 2016 had a clear reason for the Court of Auditors of the City: according to a report at the time, MA 10 was stuck in the IT stone age. Almost all files were only kept on paper, it was practically impossible to bring data about operators and subsidies together. These shortcomings have been corrected. In 2019, the City Court of Auditors stated that MA 10 has sufficient technical capabilities to identify problems at an early stage.

The question remains how much effort is put into pursuing these clues – when you consider the purchase of luxury cars, loans without amortization, apparently fictitious food deliveries by a family-building company (!) and other absurd flows of money at Minibambini.

Source: Krone

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