Your dream home turns into a nightmare

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Christian L.* (55) of Frümsen SG has been living with his family on a construction site for more than six months. The surrounding building material is covered as far as the eye can see with vegetation, rubble, dirt and site mold. The originally planned front door can only be reached “safely” with good walking shoes. After passing the unfinished garage, the path leads up a steep slope from the poorly secured excavation pit, leads to the unfinished path and ends at an unusable gate amidst rubble and dirt. L. wanted to fulfill his family’s dream of owning their own house and fell in love with a criminal.

L. trusted a general contractor. Meaning: From the initial draft of the house to its final completion, this single company is responsible. In Switzerland, there are always problems with the so-called total contractors. Because: Firms can demand that the construction work be done through their own firms and that the product be purchased. During construction, construction companies are used as favorites, who will never kiss their hand on the open market because they sometimes offer the cheapest offers under financial pressure.

“Bauleiter” was a convicted human smuggler

After months of debate, it was time last August: “We had to decide how to proceed. We had already invested all our savings and even stayed with relatives in the meantime because we were actually promised the house would be finished sooner,” says L. The house itself was almost complete. But there was still countless work to be completed inside and out, and there were a number of construction errors.

At this point, since neither the land nor the house belongs to the family, they decide to take the building project despite its flaws. Family lawyer recommended. Because: “If we hadn’t paid, we could have been deprived of our dream home,” says Christian L. “We didn’t want to take that risk and paid the last installment of several hundred thousand francs.” Without actually receiving the contractually agreed services.

What Christian L. doesn’t know at this point: A major human trafficking investigation is underway against Franz J.** (43), who was introduced to him as the “construction manager” of the general contractor in the canton of Zurich. . Plasterer Franz J. is said to have hired foreign construction workers for 80 cents an hour to “make the workers docile”, placing them in ramshackle barracks, and repeatedly without pay.

Human smugglers free

At the end of March 2023, J. was sentenced to ten years in prison. During the court hearing, it was made public how the defendant spoke about his underpaid employees. “Hold Diä Siechä sötsch alli like a slave in the concentration camp” – such punishments were caught watching the suspect phone, as “NZZ” wrote in the trial report.

Franz J. was sentenced to ten years in prison and six-figure compensation. The alleged contractor had already been in custody for almost three years. The reason: risk of stealth. J. has Swiss citizenship as well as an Austrian passport. The verdict is not yet final, so Franz J. is now free again, as confirmed by the Zurich Blick district court. And it looks like he’s back in the construction business.

Because: Just a few weeks ago, a letter from the general contractor to the L. family read, “Mr. J. is back and continues to work.” The same letter also states that the family will have to factor in an additional cost of CHF 30,000 to complete the outside business. Note for work already expressly agreed in the original contract.

Blick sent a catalog of questions to both the general contractor president and Franz J. A day later, in response, J. threatened in writing that if an article were published, he would not be able to finish the work at the family home because “credit would still be required”. On the other hand, neither the total contractor nor J. responded to the short list of questions within the suggested timeframe. As in the construction works of the L. family, this period passed without being used.

* Name known to editors
** Name changed

Source : Blick