A top editor at German tabloid BILD has been fired after he reportedly promoted a junior employee to a high-profile role while having an affair with her

• Axel Springer has fired Bild's top editor, Julian Reichelt, following a report he had an affair with an employee.
• The Bild employee said Reichelt promoted her while the affair was still going on, NYT reported.

A top editor at German tabloid Bild has been fired a day after The New York Times reported he promoted a junior employee to a high-profile job while he was having an affair with her.

Julian Reichelt told the female employee in November 2016 that "if they find out that I'm having an affair with a trainee, I'll lose my job," The Times reported, citing a transcript of the employee's testimony to investigators from a law firm. Reichelt was 36 and she was 25 at the time, per the report.

Bild parent company Axel Springer had hired the law firm as part of an internal investigation into Reichelt's conduct, The Times reported, and on Monday the company said Reichelt had been "released" from his job at the publication.

"The Executive Board learned that Julian Reichelt did not clearly separate private and professional life even after the completion of the compliance procedure in spring 2021 and told the board the untruth about it," the company said in a statement on its website.

The employee said the affair continued after Reichelt was promoted to the top newsroom job in 2017, The Times reported. Reichelt became chairman of BILD's editorial offices in 2017, per his LinkedIn.

Reichelt then promoted the junior employee to a high-profile position, which she felt she wasn't ready for, according to the transcript of the testimony seen by The Times.

Deirdre Latour, a spokeswoman for Axel Springer and Reichelt, told The Times that the female employee's testimony included "some inaccurate facts," but did not say which ones.

After the employee's promotion, Reichelt continued to ask her to come to hotel rooms near Axel Springer's office in Berlin, she said, per the transcript obtained by The Times.

"That's how it always goes at Bild," she told the investigators in her testimony, per The Times. "Those who sleep with the boss get a better job."

The Times reported that it had obtained the transcript of the testimony through a person who wasn't directly involved with the case.

The female employee declined to comment to The Times. The paper did not publish her name because the transcript of her testimony included a request for anonymity, it reported.

The details from The Times' article comes after German publication Der Spiegel reported in March that Axel Springer was internally investigating Reichelt's relationships with female staff.

The investigation into his workplace behaviour quickly closed and he was cleared of wrongdoing, although he admitted to affairs with women on staff, Reuters reported at the time.

"Contrary to rumors reported in several media titles, there were no accusations of sexual harassment, and the investigations did not discover any evidence whatsoever of sexual harassment or coercion," Axel Springer said at the time the investigation closed.

Reichelt said in a statement at the time that, "What I blame myself for more than anything else is that I have hurt people I was in charge of." He said that he had made mistakes and was "very sorry," per Reuters.

Reichelt will be replaced at the helm of Bild by Johannes Boie the 37-year-old editor-in-chief of Welt Am Sonntag.

"With Johannes Boie, we have a first-class successor," said Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner in a statement. "He has proven that he combines journalistic excellence with modern leadership behavior."

Disclosure: Axel Springer is Insider's parent company.