“Angela
Merkel should be grateful to Karlheinz Schreiber. After 10 years,
Canadian officials this week extradited the former arms lobbyist and
he will soon face charges of tax evasion, fraud and bribery in
Germany. Without him, she would not be where she is now: the
Chancellor of Germany and, according to Forbes magazine, the most
powerful woman in the world.”
“One of
the biggest scandals in German political party financing involved
recently deceased German industrialist, Friedrich Karl Flick, one of
the world’s richest men — and came to be known as the Flick
Affair. After selling his interests in auto manufacturer Daimler-Benz
to Deutsche Bank, Flick donated money to Kohl’s CDU as a form of
tax dodge. Ostensibly the money was for a worthy task: the
'cultivation of the political landscape' conducive to business
interests. That was permmissible under a law that allowed tax
exemptions on investments considered of public, economic benefit.
Later on, in 1981, tax inspectors discovered that Flick had actually
been secretly donating millions more to all leading German political
parties and, in some cases, had received tax exemptions in return.
Three men were eventually brought to trial — Flick’s business
manager, Eberhard von Brauchitsch, former economics minister Hans
Friedrichs and then-Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff (both
from the FREE Democratic Party, or FDP) — and were convicted of tax
evasion or assisting tax evasion.”
“As
more details came to light over the weeks that followed, it became
clear that the CDU had accepted illegal donations throughout the
1990s and had developed a MONEY laundering system to deal with them.
By December, honorary chairman of the CDU and former Chancellor
Helmut Kohl had partially admitted to the secret financing, speaking
about 'confidential, special gratuities for party members and party
associations' that made 'separate ACCOUNT management' seem
reasonable. 'I wanted to serve my party,' Kohl said.”
“Meanwhile
Kohl’s likely successor in the CDU, Wolfgang Schäuble, was
becoming ever more enmeshed in the Schreiber scandal. At the time,
Schäuble was one of the most popular politicians in the country and
in 1997 Kohl had handpicked Schäuble to succeed him at the head of
the CDU — but because the CDU lost the election in 1998, Schäuble
became the party’s chairman. When questioned in parliament in 1999
about whether he had accepted a donation during a meeting with
Schreiber, Schäuble disputed the question. But in a radio interview
in January, he admitted he had met Schreiber at least once more. That
created suspicion that a second donation had been made. Whatever the
case, indignation within the ranks of the CDU and its Bavarian sister
party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) toward Schäuble grew so much
that he was forced to resign. So how exactly did Merkel profit from
the Schreiber incident? The former party secretary became aware that,
in the face of an unexpected question in parliament, Schäuble had
lied about taking CASHfrom Schreiber. Merkel realized at the time
that this secret would eventually come out and would inevitably lead
to Schäuble’s downfall. She also knew that, if she wasn’t
careful, she could go down with him. After all, it was only logical
that the general secretary of a party would have the confidence of
the head of that party.”
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