Flick affair

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In the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Flick affair or Flick party donation affair was a political scandal surrounding covert party donations by the Flick group that was exposed in the 1980s . According to Flick manager Eberhard von Brauchitsch , these practices served to “maintain the political landscape”. There was also the suspicion that the donation payments were in connection with influencing decisions by the Federal Ministry of Economics in favor of the Flick Group and the CEO Friedrich Karl Flick .

The Flick affair led to a significant loss of confidence in the parties involved in the population.

Affair and trial

The starting point of the Flick affair was a share deal in 1975, in which the Flick Group sold shares in Daimler-Benz AG worth DM 1.9 billion  to Deutsche Bank . In January of that year, the Flick Group applied to the responsible Federal Ministry of Economics for tax exemption for this business in accordance with Section 6b of the Income Tax Act for “economically eligible” reinvestments. The taxes to be paid would have amounted to almost 986 million marks. Both the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs, Hans Friderichs , who was in office at the time , and his successor Otto Graf Lambsdorff (both FDP ) granted these permits.

1981 pushed the tax inspectors Klaus Förster after persistent investigation, proceeding from illegal transactions of Soverdia , a non-profit company of the Divine Word Missionaries , lockers of Dresdner Bank -Filiale Nordstraße in Dusseldorf - Pempelfort on a cash book of the Flick-General Accountant Rudolf Diehl in which cash payments of politicians from all parties represented in the Bundestag . These included: three times 250,000 DM to the CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauss , 565,000 DM to the CDU chairman Helmut Kohl as well as various payments to top FDP politicians: including several times 30,000 DM to Otto Graf Lambsdorff , several times 70,000 DM to Hans Friderichs as well as a one-off payment of 100,000 DM to Walter Scheel . The then Federal Finance Minister Hans Matthöfer of the SPD had received 40,000 DM. Since Friderichs, Lambsdorff and Matthöfer included several ministers of the social-liberal federal government among the recipients of money, the suspicion of bribery or corruption was raised.

The manager responsible for political lobbying at Flick, Eberhard von Brauchitsch , explained about the payments that they were merely party donations. Another key figure in the donation payments was the Flick authorized representative and CDU politician Adolf Josef Kanter . Kanter was off the lobby activity also as an agent of the Stasi before the elucidation of the affair information on payments to the foreign intelligence service sold (Main Intelligence, HV A) of the GDR. However, the MfS did not pass this information on to the West German media because, according to the head of the HV A, Markus Wolf , it was feared that Kanter would be exposed.

On November 29, 1983, the public prosecutor's office announced that they would bring charges against the managers von Brauchitsch and Manfred Nemitz for continued bribery and for taking bribes against Friderichs, Lambsdorff and the former Minister of Economics of North Rhine-Westphalia Horst Ludwig Riemer . On December 2, at the request of the Bonn public prosecutor's office, the Bundestag lifted the immunity of the incumbent Federal Minister of Economics, Lambsdorff, who then resigned on June 27, 1984 when the indictment was admitted.

The trial before the Bonn district court dragged on for around a year and a half. According to judge Hans Henning Buchholz, "almost all of the witnesses ... were noticeable because of their poor memory." Ultimately, on February 16, 1987, Eberhard von Brauchitsch and the politicians and former Federal Economics Ministers Friderichs and Otto Graf Lambsdorff were only convicted of tax evasion or aiding and abetting tax evasion. Von Brauchitsch received probation, Lambsdorff and Friderichs fines. It was not possible to prove that the money payments had an influence on political decisions.

The tax investigator Klaus Förster tracked down further donations from the Flick Group , which ultimately triggered the Flick affair through the practice of Father Josef Schröder, the then managing director of the Soverdia company, to issue tax-deductible receipts at five times the amount of the donation .

Bundestag committee of inquiry

In 1984, after Lambsdorff's resignation, the Bundestag set up a committee of inquiry into the Flick affair. The committee chairman was Manfred Langner (CDU). The work of the committee stretched over two years, 66 meetings for taking evidence and 321 hours of questioning and produced 11,500 pages of minutes of the meetings.

When the suspicion arose that Rainer Barzel , at the time President of the Bundestag , had also received benefits from Flick through a law firm (apparently as a fee for consulting activities, but in reality as a reward for having renounced the CDU party in April 1973. and parliamentary group chairman paved the way for Helmut Kohl), the latter resigned from his position as President of the Bundestag on October 25, 1984, one day after his questioning by the investigative committee. However, the allegations against Barzel could not be proven.

On the part of the Greens newly represented in the Bundestag , Otto Schily used the podium of the Bonn investigative committee and the fact that the Greens were the only party that could not be affected by the affair, to clear criticism of all other parties. His criminal complaint against Chancellor Helmut Kohl for alleged false statements in the investigative committee also attracted particular attention . CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler later explained Kohl's memory gaps with a “ blackout ” of the Chancellor.

In the course of the investigation of the affair, it became clear that in the 1970s all parties represented in the Bundestag at that time, i.e. the CDU , CSU , SPD and FDP , had received donations from the Flick Group - in some cases through non-profit organizations such as the Civic Association . The committee of inquiry revealed that between 1969 and 1980 more than 25 million marks from Flick's black coffers had flowed to politicians from the CDU / CSU, FDP and SPD. During this period, DM 15 million went to the CDU / CSU, 6.5 million to the FDP and 4.3 million to the SPD.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs' refusal to make certain files available to the committee led to the Federal Constitutional Court's Flick investigative committee ruling , in which the rights of the investigative committees were strengthened.

Political Consequences

In the course of the investigation of the affair it had become apparent that the CDU , CSU , SPD and FDP had disregarded the applicable provisions of the party law. In the social debate on these events, however, differences in the assessment became apparent: leading representatives of the political parties showed little awareness of wrongdoing and asserted how difficult it was to finance the parties and that it was at best a trivial offense - an attitude from 1981 and in 1984 there were several attempts to enforce an amnesty by law , but this failed due to opposition from the press and the individual parties.

Instead, the regulations on donations in the Political Parties Act as well as the deputies' obligation to report their additional income have been tightened.

The charitable law was also changed to ensure the separation of the different types of tax-privileged organizations. Non-profit organizations were expressly prohibited from supporting political parties. Political parties were banned from accepting donations from non-profit organizations. At the same time, the promotion of the democratic state was taken up as a new charitable purpose (with the exceptions at the local level and for the pursuit of particular interests).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eberhard von Brauchitsch, industrial captain and central figure in the Flick affair. (No longer available online.) Schwäbisches Tagblatt, September 11, 2010, archived from the original ; Retrieved January 5, 2013 .
  2. ↑ a b The "fifth power" . Deutschlandradio Kultur. December 9, 2009. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
  3. ↑ All richer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 2 , 1982 ( online ).
  4. ↑ The appearance of the white vests . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 1983 ( online ).
  5. ↑ What does Kohl have to do with Flick? In: Die Zeit , No. 45/1984
  6. ↑ The Flick Affair . West German radio. November 29, 2007. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
  7. ↑ Active repentance . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1981 ( online ).
  8. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: "Care of the political landscape". NDR )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.ndr.de
  9. ^ Farewell to a helmsman in the Bonn Republic . Berliner Morgenpost. September 11, 2010. Retrieved January 23, 2013.
  10. ↑ Defiant in the approximate . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1999 ( online ).
  11. ↑ A Tuesday that made Bonn shake . In: Die Zeit , No. 49/1983
  12. ↑ A good resignation is a question of when . World online . February 17, 2012. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  13. ↑ a b A German European . In: Die Welt , September 12, 2010
  14. ↑ Frau Weber appeared in the afternoon . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1987 ( online ).
  15. ↑ Sabine Quenot: Dispute about the republic bought . In: The Parliament . No. 11, March 13, 2006
  16. ↑ October 25, 1984: Barzel falls over the Flick affair . Deutsche Welle calendar sheet , October 25, 2008
  17. ↑ "You lack legal awareness". Otto Schily's last speech in the Bundestag . (PDF; 37 kB) March 1986
  18. ↑ Short and hurtful . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1986 ( online ).
  19. ↑ 67,100 . BVerfGE
  20. ↑ Paul Lersch, Hartmut Palmer: Scandals: The cultivated landscape . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1999 ( online ).
  21. ↑ The Godfather . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 7, 2006
  22. ↑ When politics is not for profit . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , June 6, 2016