Culture chief charged with embezzlement: €99,000 for diamond art project
The former head of JenaKultur faces court over contracts signed for an unfinanced art project. The public prosecutor accuses Jonas Zipf of breach of trust.
Trial over embezzled funds for art project
According to mdr.de, the former chief of the municipal public enterprise JenaKultur, Jonas Zipf, appeared before the lay court in Jena on Wednesday. The public prosecutor has brought charges against him for embezzlement of €99,000.
Zipf is alleged to have signed contracts in 2021 as works director for the art project "The Diamond Maker" by Swiss artist Christoph Büchel without the financing being clarified. The project envisaged burning unsold artworks by Büchel together with his faeces and subsequently pressing the material under pressure to form diamonds.
The city of Jena reported Zipf to the authorities in April 2022. He subsequently left JenaKultur with a severance agreement and has since been managing director of the Internationale Kulturfabrik Kampnagel in Hamburg. A second investigation against Zipf on fraud charges concerns the nationwide theatre project "Kein Schlussstrich!", which artistically addressed NSU crimes in 2021.
Source: Google News DE — Crime (de)