Putnik deal

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The Putnik Deal , Putnik Affair or Operation Putnik is a well-known attempt by the PDS party to move former SED assets abroad in order to protect them from state access by the Federal Republic . The sum of 107 million D-Marks was transferred to the Moscow company Putnik as the repayment of bogus old debts .

SED assets 1989/90

At the request of the People's Chamber of the GDR , the SED / PDS stated their cash assets as of December 31, 1989 at 6.1 billion GDR marks . At the same time, other money holdings in foreign accounts were kept secret. The party also had enormous reserves of assets in the form of businesses and real estate. Their value was given at 642 million DM , even if the value was estimated by independent sources at around 10 billion DM. The party-internal “Working Group for the Protection of the Assets of the SED / PDS” had already been set up in December 1989. This organized the generous allocation of donations and loans to comrades, as well as financial participation in over 160 companies. To clarify the whereabouts of the property, house searches were carried out in the Berlin party headquarters and other party rooms in 1992 . The independent investigative commission of the Bundestag stated in 2006: “SED / PDS pursued a strategy of concealing assets”.

Putnik deal

In the summer of 1990, the party presidium commissioned the deputy chairman, Wolfgang Pohl, and the head of party finance, Wolfgang Langnitschke, to transfer party's assets abroad. The PDS district chairman in Halle, Karl-Heinz Kaufmann, set up various accounts for this. With the support of the CPSU , the Moscow firm Putnik was supposed to invoice the SED / PDS for alleged old debts totaling DM 107 million. Among other things, it demanded around twelve million DM for the treatment of eye diseases in students from the Third World . The establishment of a “Center for the International Labor Movement” is said to have cost 25 million, and a further 70 million to train around 350 students from the Third World. With the help of the bogus reminders, the SED / PDS arranged for the above amounts to be transferred to Norwegian and Dutch accounts.

Clarification of the Putnik deal

However, the banks involved became suspicious. They blocked the amounts and informed the Federal Criminal Police Office . On October 18, 1990, this immediately initiated an investigation and searched the PDS headquarters. The next day Gregor Gysi flew to Moscow . In the final report of the investigative commission it is said that he tried there to persuade the CPSU "to maintain the legend regarding existing old claims". However, since they were concerned about their reputation, he, honorary chairman Hans Modrow and party vice- president André Brie , decided that Pohl and Langnitschke should take responsibility for the Putnik deal. While the former agreed, Langnitschke declined any responsibility because he had acted on behalf of the party. The Berlin Regional Court acquitted both of them in 1993 because they had operated on behalf of the PDS without personal enrichment. Langnitschke gave comprehensive information about the attempted transaction to the investigative committee, whereas Bisky , Brie and Gysi refused to give a statement. Langnitschke was later unable to comment on the incidents, as he died in a traffic accident in Lugano in 1998. A trial has been started against the Putnik company in the USSR.

The events led to further mass withdrawals from the PDS, which was confronted with the loss of most of the former members after the transformation of the SED in the winter of 1989/90. For the party, the clarification of the transactions also meant immense political and image damage.

More transactions

The final report of the UKVP recorded various other payments of this kind. Payments were also backdated to May 31, 1990 , since the party assets were under trust administration from June onwards, according to the decision of the People's Chamber . It was not until the summer of 1991 that the Treuhandanstalt confiscated all party accounts and thus plunged the PDS into existential financial problems. Nevertheless, another attempted million transfer was discovered in 1993. The PDS tried to transfer DM 15.3 million for left-wing parties abroad to Luxembourg . Instead of complying with the legal obligation to provide information, attempts were made to create the impression of a regular payment for political purposes by pretending to be false. In July 1995, a settlement between the PDS, the Commission of Inquiry and the Federal Agency for Unification-Related Special Tasks (BVS) ended the further reclamation of the abducted SED assets. In return, the PDS had to forego its existing assets of around DM 1.8 billion. In addition, the investigative commission was able to secure assets amounting to around 1.16 billion euros . Nevertheless, the whereabouts of some of the SED's assets are still unclear.

literature

  • Patrick Moreau / Jürgen P. Lang : PDS: The legacy of the dictatorship , Grünwald 1994.
  • Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us - On the glossing over of the SED dictatorship , Berlin 2008, pp. 37–41.
  • Hansgeorg Bräutigam: The concealment of SED assets . In: Germany Archive 4/2010, pp. 628–634.
  • Klaus Behling : Trace of Notes - How the SED's Assets Disappeared , Berlin 2019.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rolf Ebbighausen: The costs of party democracy: Studies and materials on a balance sheet of state party financing in the Federal Republic of Germany , Opladen 1996, p. 375.
  2. ↑ 16th German Bundestag, printed matter 16/2466: Briefing of August 24, 2006 (PDF; 1.3 MB).
  3. ↑ Knabe, Hubertus: Honeckers Erben - The Truth about the Left, Berlin 2009, p. 169.
  4. ↑ Peter Wensierski: Lost Traces . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 2006 ( online - Aug. 21, 2006 ).
  5. ↑ cf. 2plus4.de: Kremllicht 256-267 .
  6. ↑ See Meinhard Meuche-Mäker , Die PDS im Westen 1990–2005, Berlin 2006, pp. 18f. Series of texts by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, No. 26 (PDF; 839 kB)
  7. ↑ See Die Welt : The whereabouts of GDR funds almost cleared up .