The 53-year-old lawyer, who has not been named, took part in the trial of several members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) group.

He made representations on behalf of an alleged victim of a 2004 nail bomb attack and even secured compensation for her, but it later emerged she did not exist.

The court accepted the lawyer’s explanation that the invented victim had been passed on to him by a colleague who is now deceased, DW reports.

Although he was cleared of any criminal offence, the court reprimanded the lawyer for “violating almost every obligation of due diligence”.

The NSU trial ran from 2013 to 2018, becoming the largest, longest and most expensive criminal trial in German history.