In a Berlin courtroom, former German Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer now answers for decisions made in a more confident era — when a highway toll scheme seemed politically clever and legally manageable. The European Court of Justice disagreed in 2019, striking down the plan and leaving taxpayers with a €243 million bill after contracts had already been signed with private operators. Scheuer and a former state secretary stand accused not merely of poor governance, but of lying to parliament about what they knew and when they knew it — a distinction that separates political failure from crimi