1 year ago
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Germany’s finance minister, Christian Lindner, is facing allegations that he developed close ties to a private bank which provided a mortgage for his luxury home.
Prosecutors in Berlin have said they are examining whether to open a corruption investigation into what might have been a conflict of interest.
Lindner delivered an address on the 100th anniversary of the BBBank, a Karlsruhe-based retail bank, in May 2022 but he allegedly failed to disclose that he had received a mortgage from the institution.
After the taped address – which was recorded in advance and played to the bank’s general meeting – he went on to take out a further loan from the same bank, German media has widely reported.
Before becoming a minister, Lindner received payments of tens of thousands of euros for making speeches at evening events hosted by the bank.
Berlin’s chief public prosecutor has issued a statement saying it had begun a “preliminary investigation” into whether Lindner’s parliamentary immunity should be lifted. If that were to happen, the prosecutor would be able to go ahead with a full-blown investigation into the affair. Such pre-investigation inquiries are normal in Germany. The prosecutor’s statement emphasised it would be wrong to conclude that Lindner was suspected of having committed a crime.
Lindner’s lawyer, Christian Schertz, responded to the allegations by dismissing them. “Mr Lindner began the process of financing his property way before he started the job as finance minister,” he told German media. “All the conditions were always in correspondence with existing market terms.”
Schertz added that Lindner’s address to the bank on its anniversary was “in keeping with the regular exercise of a minister’s duties. There’s no connection between the two events.”
The allegations came to light last autumn when German media reported that Lindner had bought a villa in the south-western Berlin district of Nikolassee in January 2021 for €1.65m, and in order to carry out renovation on the property, had taken out a mortgage with BBBank for €2.35m.
Lindner, who has been leader of the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) since 2013, and finance minister since his party entered a three-way coalition government in late 2021, had taken part in BBBank events as party leader and an MP before becoming a minister. He had received payments of tens of thousands of euros for making speeches at evening events hosted by the bank.
Schertz said the activities had been carried out “in accordance with all the rules of the German parliament”. He said they had been reported and published according to the Bundestag’s transparency rules. The video message followed a request submitted by the bank to the finance ministry, he added.
The finance ministry has said that Lindner complied with the obligation to submit details about his financial interests when he became minister.
A spokesperson for the ministry declined to comment on whether Lindner had himself informed either the ministry or the bank about his mortgage before accepting the invitation to address its general meeting.
The anti-corruption organisation Transparency International Germany welcomed the preliminary investigation. “A state of law has to – and especially in the case of a government minister – take a close and critical look,” its lawyer Wolfgang Jäckle told the media organisation Funke Mediengruppe.
Daniel Mittler, head of the citizen’s pressure group Finanzwende (Financial Transition), urged Lindner to disclose the terms of his mortgage “in order to clear up even just the slightest suspicion he might have been treated advantageously”.
Government colleagues said they did not want to comment on the specific case, but offered Lindner supportive remarks. The SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil said: “We have a close and confident working relationship with Herr Lindner.”
Lindner’s party deputy, Wolfgang Kubicki, called the allegations “completely absurd”, and accused Berlin’s judiciary of “a lack of character and damaging personal rights”.
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