Imes

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IMES Import-Export GmbH
legal form Company with limited liability
founding 1981
Seat International trade center , East Berlin
Branch Trading company for weapons, ammunition and military equipment

IMES GmbH (Import-Export GmbH, code name) was a company of the GDR - Foreign Trade Ministry and subordinate to the area Commercial Coordination (KoKo). The objective of the company's activity was to acquire foreign currency through export transactions. In particular, the arms trade and the brokering and implementation of international trading transactions shaped the business field of the company, which worked closely with the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR . The business partners of the IMES GmbH were the Main Intelligence examined the Stasi.

history

Residents of the Rostock district in Kavelstorf exposed IMES-GmbH as a secret arms shipping company, which maintains trade relations with countries in the Middle East, Africa and South America. Shaken residents of the community stood in front of the huge stacks of boxes with military equipment that reached under the warehouse ceiling. The warehouse is located in the immediate vicinity of their apartments. In the middle the IMES general director Erhard Wiechert , December 2nd, 1989

At the instruction of Günter Mittag , the company with the code name Internationale Meßtechnik, Import-Export-GmbH (IMEX) was founded in 1981 with a capital contribution of 500,000 marks and started work in 1982. The business address was in the International Trade Center (IHZ), Friedrichstrasse 26, in East Berlin .

Within the KoKo, OibE Manfred Seidel (HA XVIII / 7 in the MfS Enlightenment Headquarters) was responsible for IMES GmbH.

Arms deals were mainly with Iran, Iraq, Libya, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Egypt, Ethiopia, Botswana and Uganda; The Palestine Liberation Organization was also a constant business partner.

In 1982 and 1983 IMES supplied Iran with rifle weapons, ammunition and propellant charge, while Iraq received used GDR weapons from the NVA weapons trading company Ingenieur-Technischer Außenhandel (ITA) and armored vehicles, cannons, ammunition and bridge layers from IMES.

IMES GmbH presumably supplied weapons to class enemies , such as the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua .

IMES was a Stasi company that Erich Mielke himself kept secret from Moscow . Documents relating to the IMES camp in Kavelstorf near Rostock were stamped "Secret classified material", the second highest level of secrecy of the SED regime. According to an MfS ukase, Kavelstorf was "a conspiratorial object in which, exclusively for the Imes company in the area of ​​commercial coordination... Transport, handling and storage processes with weapons and ammunition are carried out".

At the turn of the year, IMES came into the public eye when angry citizens unmasked a top-secret weapons depot in Kavelstorf near Rostock on December 2, 1989 . The main warehouse there was strategically located near the Rostock overseas port and made it logistically easy to ship the goods.

On the night of December 3, 1989, the State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Head of the Commercial Coordination (KoKo) Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski left after the events in Kavelstorf became known and thus the KoKo company IMES as a hub for the international Arms trade was exposed.

In the wake of the uncovering of the machinations of the IMES in Kavelstorf, Schalck-Golodkowski was expelled from the Central Committee and the SED at the last meeting of the SED Central Committee on December 3, 1989 .

The Berlin judiciary and the Central Investigation Office for Government and Association Crime were then particularly interested in where the Imes money had gone. After the fall of the Wall at the end of 1989, only 326,879 West Marks and 6 pfennigs were left on the account 0773 of the successful arms trading company at the Ko-Ko-Hausbank Deutsche Handelsbank .

people

  • Wolfgang Kotz, managing director and partner
  • Hanno Schütte, partner
  • Erhard Wiechert, managing director since 1984
  • Klaus-Dieter Uhlig, director
  • Rainer Finck, Deputy General Director
  • Kurt Hillmann, Deputy General Director

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Documents stashed . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1991 ( online - June 24, 1991 ).
  2. ↑ "Ask us, we're the last!" Memories of those persecuted by National Socialism and people from the anti-fascist resistance. An interview brochure. VVN-BdA Berlin, Part 2 (of 6), pp. 46-58