Exploitation of cleaners: 16 hours of cleaning a day

T he men and women come to Germany from Bulgaria with the Flixbus to the bus terminal at Frankfurt am Main main station. They paid for the journey themselves, but they think their new employer will reimburse the money. In a residential building in the north of the city, they are presented with an employment contract written in German. None of them speak German. You sign anyway. Because the information from the advertising video that the placement agency had sent them sounded convincing: a well-paid job in Germany, with a German employment contract, regular working hours, health insurance and a Christmas bonus.

More than a thousand Bulgarians were lured to Germany with these promises. The reality was different: cleaning toilets, 10 to 16 hours a day, for 3 to 5 euros an hour.

In 2026, her former boss will be on trial in Koblenz: Svetoslav Petrov, managing director of the cleaning company Terra Cleaner. The company was responsible for cleaning around 150 sanitary facilities throughout Germany, mainly in shopping centers, sometimes also in train stations, rest areas or museums.

On a Thursday in early May, Petrov takes a seat in the front row of the huge courtroom, with his son Nino sitting behind him. Both men wear jogging suits and their hair is shaved short. What judges and lawyers say is translated to them by interpreters who speak close to their ears. In addition to the two Petrovs, two senior employees of the company are accused: Nikolay Videnov, like Svetoslav Petrov, also from Bulgaria, and Bettina Freise, who acted as the face of the company in Germany and acted as a contact person for the shopping centers.

The court case was preceded by extensive investigations. The indictment alone runs to 179 pages and deals with human trafficking, forced labor, tax evasion and the embezzlement of wages. The trial provides a rare glimpse into a widespread business model that the Terra Cleaner company has operated for years on a scale far beyond what is known about similar cases.

After several months of negotiations, the verdict was reached in August. The head of the company, Svetoslav Petrov, received five and a half years in prison, his son and deputy received four and a half years in prison, Videnov received three and a half years in prison and Freise received two and a half years in prison. The public prosecutor's office had originally demanded significantly higher penalties if the defendants confessed, but this has a mitigating effect on the punishment. While the two Petrovs and Nikolay Videnov were also convicted of human trafficking, Bettina Freise was only convicted of withholding wages in 200 cases and aiding and abetting tax evasion.

But the exploitative conditions in the cleaning of sanitary facilities have by no means ended. Because this is about more than a single company. During our research into the Terra Cleaner case, we came across a criminal system in which the situation of people from Eastern Europe has been exploited for almost 20 years in order to have them clean toilets in Germany for a pittance, while a large part of the income is bypassed by the German state. People are always going to court because of this - and new companies keep popping up that continue this business model.

The basis for the business model is the leased toilet: in shopping centers, department stores, rest stops, train stations, and sometimes also in municipal facilities, the toilet facilities are leased to external cleaning companies. In return, the companies keep the plate money that customers pay to go to the toilet. Nowadays it's usually 70 cents, and almost everyone has put it on a plate like this.

At busy locations, up to 1,000 euros per day can be collected. In cash and without having to issue a receipt. Ideal conditions for multiple fraud. Fraud on the customer who assumes that the money goes directly to the cleaning staff. Fraud against employees who are paid well below minimum wage. Fraud on the lessors, to whom the companies usually undertake to comply with legal standards. And fraud against the state, which loses millions through tax evasion.

The people who work in these conditions are afraid. So much fear that we keep having agreed interviews with employees canceled at short notice. There is too much concern about personal consequences, and apparently rightly so. The taz is aware of a case in which an employee of such a cleaning company, who was quoted anonymously in a media report, was subsequently found and sanctioned by his employer.

Based on the court case, through conversations with employees of advice centers and through internal documents from the investigations available to the taz, the Terra Cleaner company's approach can still be traced.

The company used recruitment agencies and advertisements in Bulgaria to specifically recruit people with little education who did not speak German. From Frankfurt they were distributed to the various locations in Germany and accommodated in their own apartments.

Typically, Terra Cleaner employees were required to work at least ten hours a day, six days a week, and at some locations even seven days a week. For this they received a maximum wage of 50 euros plus 5 euros per day in cash. A strictly hierarchical system of simple employees, property and area managers ensured discipline. In addition, there were high sales targets for the individual locations and regular punishments in the form of fines, dismissals without notice and, according to the employees, sometimes physical violence.

The interrogations of the employees by customs provide insight into exactly how this system worked. Employees who, in the opinion of the company management, earned too little money, had up to 500 euros deducted from their wages. The partly neglected accommodation in which the employees were housed was regularly inspected by the company management. If more expensive food was found in the refrigerators, this was considered evidence that the employees had stolen plate money. Petrov and his senior colleagues decided who would clean in which region; employees were often transported to a different area from one day to the next.

A “group of thugs” was organized for an employee who was suspected of stealing plate money, which beat the man and destroyed his car. In the sanitary facilities themselves, water consumption was used to calculate how many trips to the toilet had taken place in a day. This number was compared with the plate money collected; if there were deviations, there were penalties.

In the case of labor inspections, there were specific instructions on how cleaners should answer which questions and lie about their own working conditions. For example, notices written in Bulgarian entitled “Questions during an inspection” stated that employees should never work more than eight hours a day. They were also forbidden from signing interrogation protocols during any checks.

At the end of the day, the employees had to pack the collected plate money into labeled plastic bags, so-called safe bags, send a photo of it to their area manager and then lock the bags in safes in the accommodation. Once a week the plate money was picked up by the area managers of the toilet facilities and brought to Mommenheim near Mainz. The Petrov family's home there served as the unofficial company headquarters.

In the garage, the piles of coins were counted using two money counting machines: the smaller part went into an official machine registered with the Bundesbank and was then paid into the company account and taxed regularly. The larger part was counted using a second, unregistered machine and then exchanged for notes in shopping center restaurants and other stores. The cleaners received their 50 euros daily wage, the rest went to the Petrov family and their senior employees. Bettina Freise, for example, only received an official salary of 200 euros per month; she received another 3,800 euros as a “bonus” in cash – in coins.

This business model defrauded not only the cleaning workers, but also the German state. The court estimated the damage caused by unpaid taxes and social security contributions at almost 11 million euros.

This text first appeared in wochentaz, our weekly newspaper from the left!

Every week, wochentaz is about the world as it is – and as it could be. A left-wing weekly newspaper with a voice, attitude and the special taz view of the world. New every Saturday at the kiosk and of course by subscription.

The business model involves exploiting the precarious situation of employees in Bulgaria. Many of them are Roma, who also face discrimination in Bulgaria. One reason why there are also employees who, after a home vacation in Bulgaria - for which they were fired from Terra Cleaner - re-join the company in Germany, even though they now know what to expect there. The verdict therefore does not support the accusation of forced labor that the prosecution made in the trial against the cleaning company.

Terra Cleaner's approach is not an isolated case, but is symptomatic of an industry in which such and similar business models are the norm.

As early as 2015, a court ruling was issued against the two operators of the cleaning company The Cleaning Company, which was founded in 2007, the year in which Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU. The company is said to have employed Eastern European cleaners as bogus self-employed people from 2008 onwards, paying less than the minimum wage and also avoiding social security contributions. There are suspended sentences for both company owners. One is called Udo R., is a former police officer and runs other cleaning companies. The other is called Svetoslav Petrov.

The verdict apparently doesn't stop him from further pushing this business model forward, on the contrary. He has been officially co-owner of the company Terra Cleaner since 2012, which was founded by his sister-in-law in 2009 under a different name. The company's history is striking: there have been several changes among the shareholders and managing directors, and the business address has been changed again and again.

Over the years, a nested structure of various companies emerges, partly led on paper by Petrov's wife. The company, which was described in newspaper articles from 2014 as a “company with an impeccable reputation” with “comparatively good” working conditions, is constantly expanding and eventually operates in shopping centers all over Germany, from Wilhelmshaven to Ulm. Terra Cleaner operated toilets at Galeria Karstadt, in the Skyline Plaza in Frankfurt, in Hamburg's Billstedt Center, in the Duisburg Königsgalerie and in the City Rondell in Villingen-Schwenningen.

In spring 2025 it will suddenly be over: on March 31st, customs will carry out nationwide raids on sanitary facilities operated by Terra Cleaner, and several of the employees' accommodation and the company's headquarters will also be searched. More than 100 employees are interviewed about their working conditions. This was preceded by extensive investigations, which are said to have been triggered by an anonymous tip from an employee. The phones of Terra Cleaner's operators and executives were tapped for several months.

The raids mean the end of Terra Cleaner – but not the end of the exploitation. The company is placed under the supervision of an insolvency administrator. He sells the operating equipment to another cleaning company: Bulger Service GmbH, the name stands for Bulgaria-Germany, run by the Bulgarian Viktor Rushanov.

Rushanov seems to be leading a kind of double life. For a German audience, he presents himself on the LinkedIn career network as head of Bulger Service GmbH. However, on his Facebook page, where he posts posts exclusively in Bulgarian, he appears as a local politician. There he criticizes how there is a “lack of opportunities, perspectives and support” in the region. As an entrepreneur, he in particular knows how important it is to “instill discipline, a sense of responsibility and values ​​from an early age”. He fails to mention that Rushanov, as an entrepreneur, benefits from his compatriots' lack of prospects. There is also no other reference to his business in Germany; he only mentions in passing that he also gained experience in Germany.

As the Koblenz public prosecutor's office announced at the taz's request, Bulger Service GmbH has also been under investigation since the end of 2025. “There is a suspicion that the new company continued the business model of the first company almost unchanged - and therefore also in a criminally relevant manner,” said the press spokeswoman. Bulger Service is said to have taken over at least 23 former Terra Cleaner locations and continued to operate some of them with the same staff. 52 suspects are now being investigated; once again it's about exploitation and tax evasion. The first arrest warrants were executed at the end of August.

Investigations like the one against The Cleaning Company, Terra Cleaner and Bulger Service happen again and again. In 2011, the case of a woman from Bonn became known, whose company was responsible for cleaning 50 toilets throughout Germany. Tax investigators found 40,000 euros in coins in her garage and brought in a truck to confiscate the money. In Cottbus, the managing director of a toilet cleaning company had to answer in court in 2022 for tax evasion; a trial is currently underway at the Krefeld regional court, where an entrepreneur and his cleaning company are said to have exploited employees from Ghana in toilet cleaning.

Legal action is taken against this industry again and again. But how can it be that an obviously criminal business model continues to exist?

This also has to do with the fact that the shopping centers take no responsibility for the working conditions in the sanitary facilities they lease. The taz randomly asked more than 20 shopping centers that had leased their toilets to Terra Cleaner, as well as the two largest clients, the shopping center operator ECE and the department store group Galeria. The answers sound similar: It is contractually agreed with the cleaning companies that they must adhere to legal regulations. No further checks were carried out and there was “only limited ability to gain insight into and influence the internal employment relationships of an external service provider”.

Even criminal investigations apparently do not always lead to contracts with cleaning companies being terminated. At the beginning of November, in Bikini Berlin, a shopping mall right next to the Zoological Garden, a man sits at the counter in front of the toilets on the first floor. It is the same one who sat there during visits in June and October. Without a word he changes the money; there are a few coins on the plate. Going to the toilet here also costs 70 cents. “Bulger Service” is written on the sign next to him. Bikini Berlin does not want to provide information about contracts with other companies upon request. However, commissioned service providers would “oblige them to comply with all legal provisions and regulations”. Nevertheless, the man behind the counter probably earns significantly less than the legal minimum wage.

Collaboration: Joanna Khandjieva, Philipp Nierle, Timur Vorkul