For the collapse of the archive in Cologne, the court imposed a conditional sentence
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Cologne - Almost ten years after the collapse of the city archive building in Cologne, which resulted in the deaths of two people, a court today issued a verdict against four defendants accused of manslaughter through negligence. An employee of the Cologne public transport company (KVB), who was responsible for supervising the underground construction project, was found guilty and sentenced to an eight-month suspended prison term. Two employees of construction companies and one other KVB worker were acquitted, reported the DPA agency.
The city archive collapsed into a shaft being built for the underground in March 2009. Defense lawyers tried to argue that the exact cause of the collapse could not be determined. However, the court stated in its verdict that "it has been conclusively and without doubt" proven that serious construction defects during the construction of the underground could have caused the disaster.
Two people died in the building collapse, and the material damages were estimated at 1.2 billion euros (31 billion crowns).
The Cologne city archive was the largest municipal archive in Germany with many rare documents. It housed manuscripts of the Nobel Prize-winning literary figure Heinrich Böll, former Cologne mayor and later the first federal chancellor Konrad Adenauer, as well as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Ninety-five percent of the archival materials were able to be found and rescued from the rubble after the collapse. However, some of them were seriously damaged. According to the archive's management, it could take up to thirty years to restore everything.
A new building for the city archive is expected to open in Cologne in 2020.
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