Ludwig-Holger Pfahls

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Ludwig-Holger Pfahls (born December 13, 1942 in Luckenwalde ) is a German lawyer and former political official ( CSU ).

From 1985 to 1987 he was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and from 1987 to 1992 he was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Defense . In 2005, in connection with the affair involving the arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber, he was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for accepting benefits and tax evasion . In 2011 he was sentenced to 4½ years in prison for fraudulent bankruptcy and fraud .

Education

The son of a captain attended the Leibniz-Realgymnasium in Frankfurt and the Rupprecht-Oberrealschule in Munich. He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg , Würzburg and Munich law and was established in 1971 with the thesis state, church and primary school in Bavaria for Dr. jur. PhD .

Judge and civil servant

Pfahls joined the Bavarian judicial service. In 1974 he moved to the newly created Bavarian Ministry of the Environment and in 1976 joined the Bavarian State Chancellery as a state parliament clerk . It was there that Franz Josef Strauss became aware of him and, in 1978, brought him to his inner circle of employees as a personal advisor. In 1981 Pfahls became head of the office of the Bavarian Prime Minister and in 1982 took over the management of the policy department of the State Chancellery.

President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and State Secretary

In 1985, Pfahls became President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . In 1987 the then defense minister , Manfred Wörner (CDU), invited him to the ministry as a permanent state secretary at the suggestion of Strauss. There he was responsible for arms control , procurement and export of weapons. In early 1992, Pfahls resigned from office there, allegedly voluntarily. In this context, there was speculation about an involvement in secret arms deliveries from the stocks of the National People's Army of the GDR to Israel (presumably assault rifles of the Kalashnikov AK-74 type from the ex-GDR ammunition depot Kavelsdorf).

Lawyer and Daimler-Benz authorized representative

Pfahls then joined a law firm in Munich. He became general representative of Daimler-Benz AG , initially for Belgium and from 1995 for the East Asia agency in Singapore . His assistant at the time was Dieter Holzer's son Nicolas.

Press research and publications in July and August 2004 suggest that Pfahls was already actively campaigning for the interests of Daimler-Benz AG and its subsidiaries such as DASA (now EADS ) during his time as permanent state secretary, for example with the procurement of the Eurofighter ( Daimler-Benz was also a supplier of engines and chassis for the Fuchs ABC tank destroyer .

Escape and criminal proceedings

In several cases, Pfahls accepted bribes amounting to several million D-Marks in order to promote political decisions in favor of lobbyists . Law enforcement measures were only taken in connection with the Karlheinz Schreiber affair for the delivery of tanks to Saudi Arabia . In the Leuna affair around Dieter Holzer , there was no investigation against him in Germany.

Leuna affair

In 2003 and 2004, in a spectacular court case in Paris, the business practices of the oil company Elf Aquitaine were legally processed, including the modernization and expansion of the old Minol refinery in Leuna in eastern Germany and the associated sale of the Minol petrol station chain by the Treuhandanstalt to Elf in 1991 (tender) and 1992 (award and contract signature). The 2003 evidence showed that from February 1993 at least 161 million francs (around 25 million euros) were distributed by lobbyist Dieter Holzer to various, largely unknown recipients through his company Delta International . In this context, Holzer was sentenced to imprisonment and a fine in France. The former Elf manager Alfred Sirven testified that two former German ministers or state secretaries had received "large sums".

At least two payments (3.6 million DM and 1.5 million DM) were made by Holzer on March 18 and 19, 1993 to two accounts in Luxembourg that were assigned to Pfahl by the French judiciary. French press research revealed even higher sums. It is unclear whether Pfahls was the ultimate recipient or whether the money was passed on to a third party.

Schreiber affair over the delivery of tanks to Saudi Arabia

On April 22, 1999, the Augsburg public prosecutor obtained an arrest warrant from the local court against Pfahls on the basis of an urgent suspicion of corruption and tax evasion . He was accused of having received 3.8 million D-Marks from the lobbyist and arms dealer Schreiber into an account held in trust in Switzerland in order to enable a contract for the delivery of 36 Fuchs NBC armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia . Since the manufacturer Thyssen AG was unable to produce promptly due to the short-term delivery requested by the customer , Pfahls, against the resistance of the army, pushed through that the tanks were delivered to Saudi Arabia from the stocks of the German Armed Forces , although this would improve the ability to defend themselves The army's ability to train was impaired. With an order volume of 446 million D-Marks, 220 million D-Marks are said to have flowed as bribes to the Arab clients, the arms dealers Schreiber and Rolf Wegener as well as to managers of the Thyssen group. Pfahls had concealed the money in the tax return and thereby evaded taxes of more than 1.9 million Deutschmarks.

The attorney general in Munich checked the arrest warrant and suspended it. In the meantime, in early May 1999, Pfahls fled to Taiwan , which has no extradition agreement with Germany . The then public prosecutor Winfried Maier later did not rule out that Pfahls had been informed ahead of time of the planned arrest. On July 6, 1999, he was lost in Taipei . Pfahls appeared to have flown to Hong Kong .

As reported on October 10, 2005 in the ARD -Nachrichten and the news magazine Report Munich , Pfahls was supported in his long escape by the French intelligence services Direction de la surveillance du territoire and Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure , which, among other things, passed him through unnoticed the identity checks at various airports are said to have passed in order not to stir up both the dormant Elf-Aquitaine and Leuna affairs inappropriately.

In 2000 the CSU expelled its long-time member of the Pfahls . This was not justified, however, with the scandal surrounding the bribe payments, but rather arrears of membership fees.

On July 13, 2004, Pfahls was arrested in Paris . The recordings made by a French television crew were confiscated by the police and not released for publication.

On January 20, 2005, Pfahls in Forbach was extradited to the German authorities and taken to the prison in Kaisheim as an inmate on remand . The next day, the presiding judge at the Augsburg Regional Court, Maximilian Hofmeister, opened the warrant for him in the criminal justice center there.

At the start of the trial at the Augsburg Regional Court on June 28, 2005, Pfahls confessed to accepting bribes amounting to two million Deutschmarks from arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber “for a tank deal”. Through his defense attorney, he announced a further partial confession about the acceptance of a further 1.8 million D-Mark bribes. Pfahls testified before the regional court that the two million D-Marks that Schreiber had deposited in trust in a Swiss numbered account in 1990 was payment for lobbying work in the sale of Fuchs tanks to the USA . He expressed regret to have accepted the money: "It is not only embarrassing, it's me inexplicable as it has come to this misfire." But He emphasized that it was not in payments to bribery gone because the deal would have come about without his intervention.

According to his defense lawyer Volker Hoffmann, he did not collect the 1.8 million Deutschmarks from the sale of ABC- Fuchs tanks to Saudi Arabia in 1991 as a bribe but for lobbying. On August 3, 2005, Pfahls was exonerated in this regard, in particular by the statement made by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl , who confirmed his own responsibility for the tank business with Saudi Arabia. As a result, Pfahls escaped the charge of corruption.

The public prosecutor's office only accused Pfahls of having collected the total of 3.8 million D-Marks only for business with Saudi Arabia. The deal with the US, however, played no role in the indictment, also because it was not finally clarified whether part of the allegations is statute-barred.

During the trial, Pfahls stood by his statement: "I wasn't the only one the arms dealer paid". For the investigators in the Strauss trial, this was the first time that Schreiber's widely ramified bribe system, which was processed via Swiss covert accounts, was confirmed.

Pfahls did not comment on the circumstances, helpers and backgrounds of his long flight.

On August 12, 2005, the Augsburg Regional Court sentenced Pfahls to two years and three months in prison for accepting benefits and tax evasion, which was in line with the prosecution's request. As the presiding judge Hofmeister said, the former state secretary had been promised this punishment in the context of a deal between the court, the public prosecutor's office and the defense if he made a confession. The sentence could not be suspended from the outset because it exceeded two years , but Pfahls was released shortly after the verdict in September 2005 after 13½ months in prison (half of his prison sentence including the time in extradition and pre-trial detention) Parole released.

Fraudulent bankruptcy and fraud charges and convictions

In September 2007, Ludwig-Holger Pfahls declared himself penniless and stopped making payments to his creditors - including the tax authorities  .

In December 2010 it was reported that the public prosecutor was investigating the suspicion that he was hiding a million dollar fortune. These investigations led to his arrest and a further charge against him, which the Augsburg public prosecutor brought on April 11, 2011 for bankruptcy , fraud and extortion .

The new process began at the beginning of October 2011. Pfahls confessed that around 2.1 million euros were in accounts in the Bahamas , Switzerland and Luxembourg . On November 9, 2011, he was sentenced to 4½ years in prison. The court was convinced that after his release, Pfahls had sold his villa in southern France to a straw man and shifted several million euros to covert accounts. By withdrawal of the appeal against this judgment auditing the judgment in December 2011 became final. His wife and lobbyist Dieter Holzer were sentenced to several years in prison for aiding and abetting .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Investigations by the public prosecutor: Pfahls is said to have hidden millions from creditors. December 23, 2010, archived from the original on December 25, 2010 ; Retrieved December 25, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Bankruptcy, fraud, extortion: Again indictment against Ludwig-Holger Pfahls. April 20, 2011, archived from the original on April 20, 2011 ; Retrieved April 27, 2011 .
  3. ↑ Ex-State Secretary Pfahls admits foreign accounts. Focus Online, October 5, 2011
  4. ↑ Ex-State Secretary Pfahls sentenced to four and a half years in prison . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 9, 2011
  5. ↑ The prison sentence is final . Focus Online , December 27, 2011
  6. ↑ a b fr-online.de
personal data
SURNAME Pfahls, Ludwig-Holger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (CSU)
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Luckenwalde