German Red/Green corrupt to the marrow
By Dschugan Rosenberg - 20.03.2004 17:36
German original at  http://de.indymedia.org/2004/03/76959.shtml
In regard to fighting corruption in our country the Red-Green government is part of the problem, not of the solution. Germany is suffocating in corruption affairs of the Social Democrats and Greens. It reaches right up to friends and closest staff members of the chancellor and the federal president. The police and justice system are incapable of taking action against these mafiose structures. That is proved by the cases depicted below.
1. Schröder’s chancellery minister:
Bodo Hombach worked as election campaign manager for the present (soon to be replaced) Federal President, Social Democrat Johannes Rau, and as chancellery minister for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He’s regarded as the architect of the "Schröder-Blair Paper". It was revealed in 1998 that the VEBA corporation subsidised the construction of his 1.5-million villa in Mülheim.
The “Ost-West-Zeitung” newspaper reported: "Hombach admitted, "I was broke." A two-day tax investigation ordered by North-Rhine Westphalian premier, Wolfgang Clement (Social Democrat), looking only at papers made available by Hombach, was not able to discover anything "in the short time". Hombach declared he had paid everything himself. Supposing he was saying the truth, another statement by Hombach on this scandal becomes incomprehensible: “It was the most horrible two days of my life.” It becomes comprehensible, though, in the light of a perjury trial in Bochum. The former VEBA employee, Hans Heber, now in pretrial detention, has revoked his former statement that everything connected with Hombach’s building had been legal and has confessed that a six-digit sum went through the VEBA books. In addition to the building scandal a plausible answer is still lacking for the question why in May 1998, when Hombach left the Salzgitter AG company, he was given half a million to take with him into his political career (link: http://www.freitag.de/1999/26/99260401.htm).
In this perjury trial subsequent to irregularities at VEBA a crying Hans Heber admitted that Schröder’s assistant Hombach was bribed. No charges were laid against Hombach himself because the bribe already fell under the statute of limitations. Hombach stated he hadn’t even noticed the bribe.
So how did Chancellor Schröder handle the obvious corruption of his closest adviser? Schröder fixed a really soft landing for him as EU coordinator for aid funds for the former Yugoslavia. Annual salary more than DM 400,000, financed from our taxes. Given the entwinement of the chancellery with nuclear corporations like VEBA it’s no wonder that Schröder personally negotiated the Red-Green government’s “nuclear compromise” which was then touted obediently by Environment Minister, Jürgen Trittin.
2. Social Democrat successors at VEBA
The former Bonn Chief City Director (head of the city administration) and manager of the VEBA-Immobilien AG (real estate branch), Dieter Diekmann, was arrested on suspicion of fraud running to millions. Together with other Social Democrat party members he is accused of having put aside six million marks in 1996 paid in connection with the sale of a Bonn office building. With them in the same boat is the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation, which pays the horrendous rent of 41.50 marks per square metre (link: http://www.jungewelt.de/frameit.php?/1999/07-22/010.shtml).
3. Premier Glogowski
Chancellor Schröder chose him personally to succeed him in Lower Saxony (link: http://rhein-zeitung.de/on/98/09/29/topnews/glogo.html).
For Premier Glogowski the Lower Saxony state chancellery manipulated files about supervisory board payments and official trips to hide wrongdoing. Glogowski had entrepreneurs of his hometown Braunschweig sponsor his private wedding party. Finally he had to step down as premier in 1999 when it was revealed that he had companies or the state chancellery pay for his private vacation travels ( http://www.cdurbk.de/download/dateien/cdurbk_1029922766_spd_0821.pdf). He now enjoys his retirement with pensions paid for by the pension premiums of ordinary people.
4. Cologne SPD garbage Mafia
(link: http://www.terz.org/texte/texte_04_02/trienekens.htm).
In the mid-90s Trienikens acquires a plot of land in Cologne for six million marks after the city council cedes its first-option purchase right to the land. For 27 million marks Trienekens later brings the same plot into the Hubbelrath central refuse dump. A pretty Mafia deal, blessed by Red-Green.
After that the Red-Green majority in the city council privatised refuse disposal and gave itself the top jobs: environment department head Friege (SPD) was made director of the new company, AWISTA-GmbH, public services (ÖTV) union county manager (SPD) labour director of the city works, Scheffler (Greens) got into the AWISTA supervisory board and Charlotte Niess-Mache (Greens) took over the scaled down environment department. The privatisation of the garbage sector into city-controlled private companies was carried out with the idea of later selling them to Trienekens. The city-owned IDR-AG immediately wanted to pass its AWISTA equity (25%) to Trienekens. The future front-runner of The Greens, Iris Bellstedt, happily supported this intention in the IDR supervisory board. Subsequently the Greens chairwoman played the clueless one in the environmental committee. In the subsequent years 93/94 a journalist of Antenne Düsseldorf investigated suspicious arson attacks on small Düsseldorf enterprises in the refuse disposal industry. He was not able to prove in ways that would have stood up in court blackmail attempts by Trienekens because he ran into a wall of silence and fear. When he was threatened himself, he capitulated. All the small enterprises threatened at the time have been merged in the RWE-Trienekens family. Erwin’s treasurer Rattenhuber does not want to have the circumstances of earlier sales of city shares in disposal enterprises (e.g. the Hubbelrath dump) to Trienekens investigated. He didn’t even know, he said, whether there were further contractual links between city enterprises and Trienekens (Düsseldorfer Nachrichten newspaper, 12.03.02). Here, too, a wall of fear and silence. You’ll find more information about corruption connected with the garbage incineration plant, that I won’t go into further here, at http://www.stadtrevue.de/index_archiv.php3?tid=231&bid=3.
5. Clement's move with friend Christian
On 26 January 2004 SPD super-minister Clement was called to the commission of inquiry of the Düsseldorf state parliament. At the centre of the dispute is the spectacular move of the North-Rhine Westphalian state chancellery into the glass high-rise "Stadttor". Clement’s friend, Christian Langer, owner at the time of the consultancy agency Noventa, pulled the strings for the move in 1998. Nothing was paid for the move. This had been “the favour of a friend”, Clement insisted to the inquiry, and rejected further questioning by the conservative opposition CDU as “petty”. Did Clement also consider it “petty”, Manfred Palmen of the CDU asked him, that his friend Christian had received contracts worth more than 20 million marks from state corporations? But at this point the chairwoman of the committee, Oda-Gerlind Gawlik (SPD), stopped all further discussion. Both Oda-Gerlind and Christian used to be staff in the state chancellery – so could protection of Clement’s friend Christian by Oda-Gerlind also be “the favour of a friend”? (link: http://www.mbi-mh.de/MBI-Programm/jenseits_des_Kirchturms/Clement_Superstar_/Clement_presse0019.html).
6. SPD successors try to top Clement move
Allegedly the state prosecutors were investigating the city marketing head of Düsseldorf because of his opulent lifestyle, including luxurious removal costs including oil paintings and flipper machines, in which the 3.3 million budget was exceeded by 500,000 euros. Allegedly the staff member was dismissed without notice and even eschewed a golden handshake. (link: http://www.mbi-mh.de/Primare_Navigation/MH-News/Juli_August_2003/juli_august_2003.html).
7. National SPD covered Wuppertal SPD corruption
Extract from the open letter of the former SPD member and former project head Heynkes to the Oberbürgermeister (chief mayor), that must be seen as an insider’s report ( http://www.lokalseiten.de/static/387983.html).
"If one wanted to account to the public and the voters one would also have to be prepared at last to begin with active investigation of what has happened. This is apparently not what the Wuppertal SPD wants. All these naively advanced swearings of innocence are probably meant to keep the fearful party rank and file in line. ... What absurd stories. A construction entrepreneur, investor in this town and a member of the CDU as well, donates to a party he rejects politically a few hundred thousand marks without any ulterior motive, without any specific expectations in regard to his personal projects. Credible?? No one knew anything about the 500,000 marks. Even though all that money flowed in six detailed instalments to the party through a Clees account. The bad investor had fooled the party by pretending to organise donors. Who of us would have believed that story? For months we’ve been hearing that no one in the Wuppertal SPD had an inkling and then it emerges that already in the autumn of 2000 the federal SPD “smelt a rat”, the first two alleged donors (100 TDM Mettmann, 50 TDM Hannover) evaporate into thin air. Investor Clees thereupon “officially” also owns up to these donations. The audit report of the federal party states that there were unusual proceedings and accounting mistakes. What does the so-called leadership do? It doesn’t even inform its own sub-district executive about this unique procedure. Now we’re told that none of the leaders at the time had got suspicious after this occurrence in autumn of 2000, no one had thought of checking on what was up with the other donors “recruited” by Clees in Brandenburg and Düsseldorf. Credible? Anyone who after this audit report did not go back to check was either unimaginably naïve, or had long known the facts and was out to hide them. Anyone looking at the corruption cases of the past years in this town discovers that parts of the administration, politicians, business and above all the municipal works are involved. Unimaginable damage has been done to us citizens of this town. … Over decades an unbelievable swamp with mafiose structures has obviously developed. The outcome of this in some cases highly criminal behaviour has unfortunately not been to the good of the town and its development. … Undemocratic and uncontrolled actions by a few has a lot to do with it. Instead of pillaging municipal companies, asserting useless projects and filling own pockets one had better thought more about the town and its citizens.”
That is how this insider’s report senses the coming court acquittals.
8. SPD members also gain from building student hostels
Also at the centre of court action in Wuppertal are the dubious circumstances of the construction of student apartments in Tannenbergstrasse in the 90s. Giving state’s evidence, Gerd Kolbe lays blame on the construction engineer and Social Democrat (SPD) politicians. He said he’d visited SPD Councillor Specht in his firm. He testified that he handed him 30,000 marks in cash in the tea kitchen. Specht had received another 60,000 marks from the also charged construction magnate Gerlich, the witness said. In return, Specht was to ensure in town hall that fewer parking slots than required could be provided for the large rental building (link: http://www.radiowuppertal.de/service/GWG/292.shtml).
9. Use of ostensible partners
The large donation by Uwe Clees to the Wuppertal SPD was to be well hidden. This was stated by a witness on the fifth day of the Kremendahl trial, thereby placing heavy blame on the Wülfrath investor being tried. The Mettmann construction engineer Martin Holzschneider made clear that he was an ostensible partner, a front ( http://radiowuppertal.de/service/kremi/77.shtml). Those are words that simply scream for acquittal of the money recipients by the court.
9. Schröder’s cabinet, Klimmt case
Schröder’s minister Klimmt, as president of the 1. FC Saarbrücken soccer club, is alleged to have entered bogus contracts in 1996 with the former Caritas manager, Hans-Joachim Doerfert. State prosecutors found that more than DM 614,000 flowed to the club from Doerfert’s Caritas Trägergesellschaft Trier (CTT) between 1996 and 1999 without it giving anything in return. (Der Tagesspiegel newspaper, 09.11.2000). The prosecutors issued a fixed penalty notice (Strafbefehl) which Klimmt accepted. After that (!) our present defence minister, Peter Struck, declared: “I am certain that he (Klimmt) is innocent.” Asked whether under these circumstances Klimmt would remain minister, Struck said: “I see no damage caused by his staying in office.” ( http://www.phoenix.de/old/themen/topt/112000/01153/)
10. Private flights to the Adriatic by ministers with girlfriends, courtesy of the state bank
For a long time the premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, Wolfgang Clement, had made light of the socalled flights affairs, dismissing it as a “non-issue” (“Luftnummer”). The accusations that members of the state government had jetted privately through Europe with the standby aircraft of the state-owned Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) were directed mainly at Clement, his predecessor Johannes Rau (now German president) and the North-Rhine Westphalian finance minister, Heinz Schleusser. The scandal reached its first highpoint with Schleusser’s resignation on 26 January 2000. He had at first denied taking his lady friend with him on flights to the Adriatic but had to own up to two such occasions under the pressure of evidential documentation.
The degree of criminal energy shown by Social Democrats could be gauged from Schleusser’s statement that he flew on government business to the (formerly Yugoslav) Adriatic to talk to local politicians about peace and postwar reconstruction. To check up on that claim journalists went to the trouble to question all local politicians in the area – hundreds of them – whether they had had any such talks with Schleusser. None had. But Schleusser had been seen at his private yacht. Here was a politician claiming his corrupt actions as self-sacrificing Christian service for suffering fellow human beings. In the parliamentary inquiry, Clement, who himself took part in flights for more than DM 30,000, depicted himself as “a fighter against corruption”. “Had I known the bills, I would have exploded instantaneously.” ( http://www.bundestag.de/dasparlament/2000/13/Inland/2000_13_050_058.html, http://www.message-online.de/arch3_00/03baum.htm).
11. Premier Rau receives DM 150,000 subsidy from the Westdeutsche Landesbank for his 65th birthday party
Records of the airline company showed that Johannes Rau, now president, also flew at least five times with jets chartered by the WestLB, including to his holiday home at the North Sea, electioneering events or prize awarding functions as chairman of the "Kultur und Bibel" (Culture and Bible) association. It also emerged that Rau accepted sponsorship of DM 150,000 from the WestLB for his 65th birthday. (WAZ 11. and 13.12.99). Fellow Social Democrat Clement ordered all investigation of Johannes Rau stopped “to prevent damage to the office of federal president”. The Belgian "King-Albert" effect in its German version. Schleusser, Rau and Clement are said to belong to an investment club launched by the WestLB. The newspaper “Die Woche” wrote that the 33 owners of the club, including the three SPD politicians involved in the flights scandal, each had DM 90,000 equity in the club, which had to be added to monthly. Others in the club are company bosses and top bankers. Rau is a founder member. By Clements’ definition the whole thing is “a savings club that couldn’t be more normal” (FR 5.1.00) (link: http://www.gsa-essen.de/gsa/publikationen/spendenaffaeren.htm).
Later it became known that a woman staff member of the resigned finance minister Schleusser at the start of January, i.e. before he resigned, systematically had impermissible access to the files of the Düsseldorf prosecutors handling the affair. “Absolutely correct procedure,” commented Justice Minister, Dieckmann (SPD) (Bild 28.1.00).
12. The "Green friends”, orders to friends and life partners without tenders
In 1995 the environment minister of the state of Hesse, Iris Blaul of Alliance90/The Greens, resigned. She had appointed her de facto spouse as head of the central department of the ministry, but that wasn’t her only reason for stepping down. Another was the refusal of her state secretary (junior minister), Johannes Schädler, to place purchase orders with her relatives or acquaintances without calling tenders. Under Blaul stacks of such orders rained on party friends without comparative offers and without public tendering ( http://www.jungewelt.de/frameit.php?/1998/08-06/011.htm).
Under the then Hesse premier, now federal finance minister, Hans Eichel, the next environment minister, Magarete Nimsch, also belonged to the Alliance90/The Greens. The corruption continued happily under her aegis; if I recall correctly hr3 radio even reported a private apartment being rebuilt with tax money. More orders without tenders. It was all just an “evil-intentioned media campaign”, was the reaction of The Greens at the time.
13. Schröder’s cabinet, Scharping’s private fee from a consultant
Chancellor Schröder dismissed Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping after it came out that while he was minister he was paid fees amounting to DM 140,000 by the public relations enterprise “Hunzinger Information AG”.
14. SPD corruption in Kiel
(link: http://ndr.de/tv/ndraktuell/archiv/20020320_3.html)
Karl Pröhl, on the staff of the Schleswig-Holstein state chancellery, had five other posts in real estate firms at the same time. So Pröhl was working for both the state government and private entrepreneurs, including the firm that wanted to buy the Kieler Schloss (Kiel Castle) from the state. It meant that at times Pröhl was negotiating with himself. As a staff member in the state chancellery Pröhl also worked for the state-owned investment bank. There he is alleged to have collected commission for facilitating favourable-interest loans, in one case DM 24,000.
15. Software without tender - Kiel versus Federal Labour Agency
Joachim Lohmann (SPD) was finance state secretary in Kiel until 1998. On his orders the Simonis government bought computer and software from SAP and debis for DM 20 million. The State Auditor found that contract-awarding regulations were broken. The auditors found that the SAP and debis computer system was three times as expensive as that of the lowest bidder. So not exactly a snap. After the large order, Lohmann left the finance ministry; a few months later he had a consultant contract with debis and SAP, for more than half a million marks. The suspicion is that he was already fixing up his lucrative follow-on employment while he was in the ministry.
Now we’re experiencing the same thing in a larger dimension but on the same pattern with the Federal Labour Agency. In the one case the taxpayers had to foot the bill, in the other case the workers with their jobless benefits.
Conclusion
These cases could be listed ad infinitum. They show that the leaders of Red/Green at federal, state and municipal levels are woven into mafiose structure. This criminal behaviour does not stop at violence, either (case 4). The Red/Green corruption and bribing the public gets to know is only the tip of an iceberg. The undiscovered scale is likely to be horrifying.
So why are the perpetrators not punished?
The court constitution act states that civil servants of the state prosecution must carry out the official orders of their superiors (§146). The next paragraph states that the federal justice minister has the right of supervision of the Federal General Prosecutor (Generalbundesanwalt) and the Federal Attorneys, and the Land Justice Administration is the supervisory power of all state prosecuting officials of the Land concerned. The state prosecutors have to investigate in line with the law, but they also remain bound to obedience to superior authorities. Investigations can be politically steered or even stopped by the justice ministry. The ministry also lays down how many resources, i.e. state attorneys and investigating funds, are allocated for individual cases or subject areas. (More information at the Bavarian Judges Association http://www.bayrv.de/RStPol/StellungStA/RStP_StStA_Weisung.asp?ID=).
The state prosecutors have to take action against people close to their top authorities, as case 11 shows. But that does not happen, of course, because of the power to give orders of the ministry, in particular as even judges can be influenced in this way. Finally, state prosecutors who make themselves unpopular by not “sparingly” investigating the party friends of the premier don’t get promoted.
Social Democrat Clement scraps justice ministry
When the garbage and construction scandals were rocking North-Rhine Westphalia and there was talk of “blanket corruption”, the then premier and present economics and labour minister Clement had a brainwave, perhaps meant to effectively protect his SPD cronies from young, courageous state prosecutors: he simply scrapped the justice ministry and merged it with the interior ministry.
This decision to return to “pre-democratic” times was sharply criticised by the then chief justice of the supreme court, the Bundesgerichtshof. Clement wanted police and the justice system to serve one master, the division of powers into executive and judicative demanded by the law-governed state was to be done away with. It would have empowered non-expert SPD protégés in the interior ministry to lord it over courageous prosecutors investigating cronyism. This attack on the judicative failed in the Land Constitutional Court ( http://www.wdr.de/themen/kultur/rueckblick/2004/02/09.jhtml, http://www.forum-recht-online.de/1999/299/299rkstolterfoht.htm).
Clement system in the Federal Labour Agency
We now see at national level in the case of the 165-million-euro rubbish software in the Federal Labour Agency how the Clement system continues. Red/Green chatter about “more security” and crime-fighting, while their functionaries are themselves involved in criminal activities. This honourable company has become unassailable because of its power and its connections.
Can we expect a better, more social future society, or justice, from these people? What can we expect in future from the Social Democrats?
(Translated by Diet Simon)
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