13. Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry of the State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt

State Parliament of Saxony-Anhalt

The 13th parliamentary committee of inquiry of the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt was an investigative committee of the 6th electoral term of the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt . He was tasked with clearing up the subsidy affair in Dessau .

Situation before the establishment of the committee

In February 2010, house searches of companies and private apartments in Dessau-Roßlau , Wittenberg , Kemberg and Eisleben were carried out on suspicion of subsidy fraud . According to reports in the media, the state of Saxony-Anhalt wrongly paid out several million euros in funding for educational measures to companies. There were suspicions that a former regional head of the education center of the Halle / Dessau Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Dessau had arranged educational measures that, despite the payment of subsidies, would not have been carried out or not as requested.

The public prosecutor's investigations were based on anomalies identified by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which led to the involvement of a private investigator who had submitted his final report in October 2008. It emerged from this that attendance lists were signed by participants in funded training measures even though they had not taken part. The public prosecutor's office was informed of the results. At the same time, irregularities were noticed during an on-site inspection by the state administration office .

The public suspected that there was a connection between the irregularities in the allocation of funds to companies and donations to the CDU . In particular, there was the presumption that the regional head had asked the grant recipients to make donations to the CDU. The assumption was supported by the fact that several people involved, including the regional head and several entrepreneurs benefiting from the granting of funds, were members of the CDU and held honorary positions in city councils and at the Dessau 05 sports club .

In addition, there was suspicion that there was a direct relationship and cooperation between the regional head and the responsible officer in the CDU-led Ministry of Economics and Labor. There was an impermissible influence on the processing of funds. Despite this situation, no conclusions were drawn within the ministry. There was also the allegation that even after four years there was no concrete investigation result from the public prosecutor and that there was a refusal to investigate party donations made to the CDU.

Plenary hall of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt

Against this background, the parliamentary group Die Linke requested on July 5, 2012 a current debate on the evaluation of the Dessau funding and CDU donation scandal , which was carried out on July 13, 2012. The Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group had submitted a request for self- involvement in the Committee on Science and Economy . The committee agreed to discuss the matter at its July 19, 2012 meeting. The state government reported to the Committee for Science and Economy.

The two opposition factions Die Linke and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen judged the state government's investigation to be inadequate and, at the state parliament meeting on October 18, 2012, jointly submitted a motion to set up a parliamentary committee of inquiry. With the votes of Die Linke and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, the motion was accepted, with the parliamentary parliamentary groups of the CDU and SPD abstaining.

Investigation order

According to the appointment decision, the investigation contract comprised five points.

To what extent the allocation and control of funds, especially in the area of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, was illegal.
To what extent the state government made illegal granting of funds possible.
Whether the illegal granting of funds was favored by insufficient controls.
Whether and to what extent fund recipients made donations or other allowances to members of the state government or related persons and organizations and whether lecturer contracts with the IHK Bildungszentrum Halle-Dessau were concluded at conditions unusual for the market or as bogus contracts, and whether donations were made in connection with information events of the education center.
Whether the state government has done everything it can to quickly clear up cases of subsidy fraud and whether the investigative authorities were adequately equipped.

Course of the investigation

A total of 24 committee meetings took place. The constituent meeting of the committee took place on November 30, 2012. The first three meetings served to prepare for the hearing of witnesses. The interrogations took place from the fourth session. While the testimony was held in public, the other deliberations took place in private. In the committee, 19 conclusions were taken in which a total of 58 witnesses were to be heard. Among the witnesses was the Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff (CDU), who was questioned at the meetings on September 15, 2014 and July 1, 2015. Minister for Justice and Equal Opportunities Angela Kolb (SPD) was questioned on December 19, 2014. In addition, the committee decided on nine requests for files , on which 227 files and five DVDs with extensive data were submitted to the committee. At the 23rd meeting of the committee on October 15, 2015, it was decided to conclude the taking of evidence .

Results

The final report was decided in the 24th meeting on November 20, 2015 with eight votes from the CDU and SPD against five votes from the Left and Alliance 90 / The Greens. It contains a section on results and assessments that is only supported by the CDU and SPD. The final report also includes two separate votes from the members of the Left and Alliance 90 / The Greens parliamentary groups. In the state parliament meeting on December 11, 2015, the committee presented its final report of December 2, 2015, in which the state parliament debated the result.

In detail, the following results were found and assessments made:

Results and evaluation of the committee majority from CDU and SPD

CDU

SPD

The concise result and assessment section of the CDU and SPD groups in charge of the government comes to the conclusion on five pages that neither the files nor the testimony of witnesses prove that the state government had any influence. There was obviously no such influence. It is true that there was the so-called priority e-mail with which the state administration office was informed of a request by the then Minister of Economics, Reiner Haseloff, to prioritize two projects that were part of the subsidy fraud. According to the testimony of witnesses, these are also to be seen as a decree, but did not release the state administration office from fulfilling its inspection obligations. The aim of the email was merely to achieve priority processing while observing the inspection obligations.

The control mechanisms would have worked. If the examinations had been carried out as was sometimes requested in the committee meetings, many applicants would have had to wait longer for funding, which would have been publicly criticized.

It was left open whether increased unannounced on-site inspections would have led to the avoidance of abuses. They would only make sense if they were used across the board, but the staff would not have been sufficient in view of the mass business of this funding instrument. There were samples. Ministries had no influence.

The investigated facts are due to the high level of criminal energy of individuals. This cannot be prevented entirely. The committee work contributed to improving the state's funding policy.

With regard to party donations, the CDU and SPD came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of a connection between donations and the granting of funds. In particular, the donations made by the CDU district association Dessau were not noticeable during the period in question.

There was no influence of the state government or third parties on the investigation. The investigation was carried out carefully.

In the conclusion, the five questions of the research assignment are each answered in the negative.

Special vote of the members of the parliamentary group Die Linke

The left

In the 29-page special vote of the committee members of the Left Party, however, it is assumed that the allegations and allegations mentioned in the appointment decision were partially confirmed.

Inadequate action by the state government was said to have favored years of misuse of subsidies, at least negligently. There was no reaction to personnel bottlenecks, the necessary control mechanisms were not supported or implemented. The Ministry of Economic Affairs had no right of signing above a certain scope and there was a lack of standardized reporting obligations.

In addition, there is a lack of sensitivity with regard to susceptibility to corruption as well as to preventive and educational measures.

Furthermore, there was at least an indirect influence on the state administrative office by the state government, since requests, information and recommendations from members of the state government were understood by employees as instructions and decrees and were not questioned.

In many cases, it is no longer possible retrospectively to successfully reclaim the wrongly granted funds amounting to 7.2 million euros due to the filing of bankruptcy . The abuses are not isolated cases, but the result of a sophisticated system. A network of fraud had a direct impact on the granting of funds. In the cases examined, the courses would not have been held or would not have been held to the specified extent. In some cases, the training measures would have been part of the continuous workflow. For a majority of the funding measures, bogus offers were also submitted, for which the cheapest provider of the respective educational measure had already been determined in advance. Via subcontracts, the company and the IHK training center would have pushed training orders to one another and collected the difference between the various service prices. The internal control mechanism of the IHK would have been inadequate, legal supervision of the IHK was incumbent on the Ministry of Economics and Labor. The ministry, headed by the then Minister of Economics, Reiner Haseloff, had political responsibility and was obliged to create the conditions to prevent misuse of funds.

On-the-spot checks were only carried out to an inadequate extent and usually only announced, even after irregularities had become known. The controls were temporarily suspended in order to concentrate the limited staff on the approval of applications. The reassignment of applications had priority over proof of use checks. The resulting delay in audits has led to budget law violations . The reason for the inadequate personnel capacities was in particular the state government's personnel development concept, which was dictated solely by austerity constraints and prevented an increase in personnel in the state administrative office from the outset. The state government was responsible for the subsidy fraud because the inadequate control mechanisms were accepted.

Furthermore, certain information was not passed on to the top employer or test and control reports were not evaluated. It seems questionable whether the top employer could make political decisions or whether these have been delegated downwards.

The transfer of the public prosecutor who was dealing with the matter, which took place at his request, to the Finance Court of Saxony-Anhalt , had, however, resulted in a minor delay in the investigation. There are no indications of unusual procedures. A targeted influence on the procedure by the state government that led to delays could not be ascertained. However, it is doubtful that the state government has done everything to carry out the investigation quickly with sufficient staff and to conclude it promptly. There is a lack of sufficient, well-qualified and specialized staff.

As a result, the special vote postulates the need to fundamentally realign the state's funding policy. The aim should no longer be to distribute as many funds as possible; what is needed is a binding strategy. The focus should be on the sustainability and measurability of the results. In particular, short and medium-term growth in the gross domestic product or the increase in employment but also good, especially family-friendly working conditions should be taken into account. The funding should be geared towards transparency, innovation and sustainability. In addition, the establishment of a subsidy database is required. Employee representation should be included in the process of granting and monitoring funding and analyzing targets. The previous control mechanisms should be evaluated.

Special vote of the member of the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group

Alliance 90 / The Greens

In the 28-page special vote of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, the state government's responsibility for what is happening is emphasized. In 2001 a guideline for the qualification of employees was issued, which was highly prone to abuse. Training courses could have been carried out in-house and thus at the applicants' own premises. In addition, wage reimbursements would have been paid. In the interplay of the facts that the employees to be trained remain in the company during the training, but on the other hand the wage costs are partially reimbursed, there would have been major problems with the control of the measures and a strong motivation for abuses. In fact, in a large number of cases, training courses would only have been carried out pro forma. The employees actually continued to work, but wage reimbursements were still received.

As an example, a case was given in which a company with nine employees trained eight of its employees for eight hours a day for seven months. The waiver of almost the entire workforce over such a long period of time cannot be represented as meaningful. Nevertheless, the funding was approved in this way. Rather, in the specific case, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, headed by Rainer Haseloff at the time, got involved and, with reference to a request from the top management, demanded the project's approval as soon as possible. In the example, the training had the peculiarity that it was carried out by a Bernburg CDU city councilor who was also a participant in the training.

Another problem is that permanent staff shortages in the state administrative office have prevented proper controls and timely verification of the use of evidence. Unannounced on-the-spot inspections practically did not take place. At the same time, there would have been considerable pressure to let the funds flow out.

Furthermore, it should be noted that a concrete labor market policy objective and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the funding had not taken place.

No evidence was found for a system originally suspected when the committee was set up, which would have provided illegal funding against the payment of party donations to the CDU. However, people around the Dessau CDU were intensely involved in subsidy fraud.

It is noticeable that there were contacts on the part of the on-site activists with an employee and CDU member in the Ministry of Economic Affairs. In several cases, this employee had instructed the state administration office acting as the granting authority to approve projects that had now turned out to be subsidy fraud. In addition, he had monitored the control of the subsidies and was informed of intended on-site controls. In the event of an intended inspection at a company belonging to a CDU city council in Kemberg, he pushed through a rescheduling so that he could participate himself. The underlying funding process was later the subject of investigations by the public prosecutor. In another case, this employee was also paid by an entrepreneur in the amount of € 6,000.

On the part of the alliance green special vote, the state government's handling of corruption was criticized in particular. In particular, the heavily burdened employee of the Ministry continues to work in the same area. There was not even a transfer, although this had been suggested and tried several times in-house by the responsible employees. Ultimately, he was promoted.

In addition, the criminal investigation was made more difficult and delayed by the insufficient resources of the criminal prosecution bodies active in the field of white-collar crime investigation.

The behavior of the current Prime Minister Rainer Haseloff is particularly problematic. Although illegal grants had been issued on his behalf, he had not given any useful answers to the question of the reason in the committee, but claimed that he no longer knew. The fact that the ministry no longer knows in retrospect why it wanted certain concrete measures is not credible. The prime minister had obstructed the investigation. In addition, the state government is also responsible for the inadequate handling of corruption cases and the inadequate controls.

In the alliance green special vote, several recommendations for action are given as a conclusion. Then, among other things, the system of granting funds should be checked. Funds should only be granted if control is guaranteed. Guidelines should be checked for their susceptibility to abuse, goals for the allocation of funds should be defined and measures should be continuously evaluated. A funding database should be set up. Priorities set by superior / political bodies must be justified in writing and in a comprehensible manner. Regulations and instructions for responding to suspected corruption must be drawn up and observed. An independent body must be able to be involved. In addition, resources in the area of combating economic crime should be strengthened.

Members

The committee consisted of 13 members of the state parliament from four parliamentary groups. Five members of the CDU parliamentary group, four members of the Die Linke parliamentary group , three members of the SPD parliamentary group and one member of the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group . The chairman was Peter Rotter (CDU), the deputy chairman was initially Eva von Angern (left).

The members were:

CDU

Uwe Harms , Eduard Jantos , Dietmar Krause , Peter Rotter (committee chairman) and Ulrich Thomas . Deputy members were Daniel Sturm , Edwina Koch-Kupfer , Wigbert Schwenke , Eva Feußner and Lars-Jörn Zimmer . Ulrich Thomas acted as chairman of the CDU parliamentary group.

The left

Eva von Angern , André Lüderitz , Frank Thiel and Gudrun Tiedge . Deputy members were Edeltraud Thiel-Rogée , Swen Knöchel , Uwe Loos and Frank Hoffmann . Frank Thiel acted as chairman of the parliamentary group Die Linke.

By resolution of the state parliament on July 11, 2013, Sven Knöchel became a member of the committee and Eva von Angern became a deputy member, with a resolution of October 17, Gudrun Tiedge became a deputy member Edeltraud Thiel-Rogée member of the committee.

SPD

Rüdiger Erben , Nadine Hampel and Andreas Steppuhn . Deputy members were Petra Grimm-Benne , Patrick Wanzek and Holger Hövelmann . Andreas Steppuhn acted as chairman of the SPD parliamentary group.

With a state parliament resolution of December 11, 2013, Ronald Mormann became a member of the committee for Rüdiger Erben.

Alliance 90 / The Greens

Christoph Erdmenger . Claudia Dalbert was the deputy member .

After Christoph Erdmenger left the state parliament, Olaf Meister became a member of the committee by resolution of the state parliament on October 17, 2013.