A former mayor in Bavaria has been fined €7,200 (nearly $8,300) after secretly monitoring his secretary with a hidden camera for about a year.
The Landsberg district court issued the penalty just below the threshold at which a conviction is normally entered on a criminal record.
Court director Alexander Kessler called the case an “incredible incident” and said the relatively limited sentence was only possible because the former mayor had reached a compensation agreement with the victim shortly before the ruling.
He has agreed to pay his former employee €10,000 in compensation.
The then-mayor of Reichling had installed a camera beneath a desk in his employee’s office, allowing him to monitor her, visitors and phone calls.
He could stream both video and audio to his phone and sometimes made recordings.
The surveillance was discovered in October 2025, after which police searched both the town hall and the mayor’s home.
The scandal later prompted him not to seek another term in local elections in March.
The former mayor confessed and said he had distrusted the employee because she supported a political rival.
He told the court he had come to see his outer office as a “meeting point for the opposition” and installed the camera for that reason.
“That was wrong,” he said.
He added that his conduct had been unworthy of a mayor and apologized both to his former secretary and to residents of the town of around 1,700 people.
