Wulff affair

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Bettina and Christian Wulff (2010)

The Wulff affair is an affair involving the former Federal President Christian Wulff ; it began in December 2011 and resulted in his resignation in February 2012.

It was initially about the accusation that Wulff had answered a small question in the Lower Saxony state parliament that aimed to finance his own home inappropriately (so-called credit affair). Then Wulff was accused of trying to prevent reporting on it (so-called media affair). As a result, new allegations were repeatedly raised because of earlier behavior from Wulff's time as Prime Minister. On the occasion of a vacation trip to Sylt , which the film producer David Groenewold is said to have paid for , the Hanover public prosecutor's office finally started investigations on suspicion of accepting benefits and applied for the lifting of Wulff's immunity as Federal President. Wulff then resigned.

After 13 months of investigations with a total of 21 suspected cases by the Hanover public prosecutor's office, in March 2013 she raised the charge of bribing over € 400 and applied for a penalty order for € 20,000 against Wulff. In the remaining 20 suspected cases, no violations by Wulff could be determined. After Wulff had rejected the public prosecutor's offer to discontinue the proceedings against him in return for a payment, the public prosecutor brought charges of corruption and bribery against Wulff and Groenewold at the Hanover regional court on April 12, 2013 . The court admitted the indictment on August 27, 2013, but reduced the allegation to accepting and granting benefits . On February 27, 2014, Wulff and Groenewold were acquitted, but Groenewold was cautioned because of a false affidavit . The court also stated that Wulff was entitled to compensation “for the searches suffered”. The public prosecutor's office appealed against the judgment on March 5, 2014, but withdrew it on June 13, so that the acquittal is final .

Overview

At the end of 2011, accusations were raised in the press that Wulff had incorrectly answered an inquiry in the Lower Saxony state parliament in 2010. The question was about business relationships with entrepreneur Egon Geerkens . Wulff had stated that there were no business relationships. The Bild newspaper had determined that Wulff had received a loan of 500,000 euros from Geerkens' wife for the purchase of a house in Großburgwedel in 2008. Geerkens then informed Spiegel that he had negotiated the loan and was involved in its processing.

The behavior is sometimes viewed as a violation of the Lower Saxony Ministerial Law. The loan was concluded on particularly favorable terms. Wulff took Geerkens with him on trips abroad as a “consideration” as a representative of the Lower Saxony economy. Wulff himself said that the “private” loan bears interest at normal market rates and has no official reference. According to the public prosecutor's office, "the whole thing appears to be plausible and not suspect in terms of criminal proceedings".

According to Wulff, he tried to delay reporting by calling the Bild newspaper and threatening to file a criminal complaint. The Bildzeitung viewed the call as an attempt to stop reporting entirely.

The reports of these events sparked a series of further research. It was criticized that Wulff had repeatedly accepted holiday invitations from managers and entrepreneurs; Wulff explained that the invitations, which he saw as friendly, had no relation to his administration. Another allegation related to the financing of a private business meeting (“North-South Dialogue”); the response of the Wulff government to a request from the state parliament in this regard was incorrect. The organizer of this meeting, Manfred Schmidt , had also financed Wulff's celebration after his election as Federal President. Eventually it became known that Geerken's client was the law firm where Wulff worked until 2011, initially as an employed lawyer and finally as a freelancer. This relationship is partly viewed as a “business relationship” in the sense of the state parliament's request from 2010. Wulff points out that he never advised Geerkens personally.

The accusations drew numerous calls for resignation in the press, politics and (legal) science. The majority of the population has been pleading for resignation since mid-January 2012. The public prosecutor's offices in Berlin and Hanover and the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office checked whether there was an initial suspicion of accepting benefits in the office.

On February 17, 2012, after 597 days in office, Wulff resigned from the office of Federal President as a result of the application for the waiver of immunity in the course of planned investigations by the Hanover public prosecutor's office on suspicion of accepting benefits .

Prehistory: Rumors about the home financing and the lawsuit for inspection of the land register by the Spiegel magazine

Because of long-standing rumors that Wulff had received the money for his house from Carsten Maschmeyer , Der Spiegel fought for the right to inspect the land register of his property before the Federal Court of Justice on August 17, 2011. Since only an owner's land charge was entered in the land register, i.e. no lender was recognizable, Bild von Wulff asked for information about the financing. Wulff initially stated that he had concluded a loan agreement with BW-Bank . This was actually only concluded in February 2010 after the state parliament asked about business relationships with Egon Geerkens . When asked, Wulff admitted that he had previously signed a loan agreement with Edith Geerkens and later replaced this loan with a loan from the BW Bank.

"Credit affair"

The controversial loan from Edith Geerkens

The assumption of a false statement in the Lower Saxony state parliament was at the beginning of the Wulff affair. The picture shows the plenary hall.

On December 13, 2011, Bild reported that on October 25, 2008, the Wulff couple accepted a private loan of 500,000 euros from their entrepreneurial wife, Edith Geerkens. The interest rate on the loan was four percent. The loan amount was one of Egon Geerkens issued and by the checking account of his wife covered Bundesbank check paid. The loan was intended to finance a private home.

Wulff had not stated this fact in a survey in the Lower Saxony state parliament on February 10, 2010. On February 18, 2010, Wulff replied to the question

"Was there any business relationship between Christian Wulff [...] and Mr. Egon Geerkens or [...] any company in which [...] Mr. Geerkens was a partner [...]?"

as follows:

"There has been no business relationship between Prime Minister Wulff and the people and companies named in the question in the last ten years."

Press reports question whether the money actually came from Edith Geerkens. The plausibility of Wulff's statement is questioned for several reasons: On the one hand, Egon Geerkens told Spiegel in 2011 that he had negotiated the loan; only the loan was paid out via an account of his wife, for which he had a power of attorney. Literally he said with regard to the anonymous check: "I didn't want any bank trainee to see that so much money is flowing from me to Wulff." Geerkens also said that the friendship relationship was mainly between him and Wulff, not between Wulff and his Woman. Even if the money actually comes from Edith Geerkens, according to the legal scholar Alexander Schall , at least one credit order can be seen in the matter , which establishes a business relationship in the form of a guarantee from Egon Geerkens to Wulff.

On the other hand, it is reported that Edith Geerkens borrowed one million euros from her husband in 2008 to buy a house in Florida. Wulff, on the other hand, said in a television interview at the beginning of January that Edith Geerkens had been looking for an investment opportunity for unused assets and therefore granted him the loan.

According to constitutional lawyers such as Hans Herbert von Arnim , professor at the University of Administrative Sciences Speyer , Wulff violated the Lower Saxony Ministerial Law , which forbids the acceptance of rewards and gifts, including discounted loans, with reference to the office. Von Arnim sees the official reference in the fact that Geerkens took part in Wulff's business trips abroad several times during the period in which the loan was granted and disbursed. It is true that this was done at his own expense; nevertheless, "added value" can be seen in the take-away as such. In addition, there was no objective reason for Geerken's participation to be discernible because Geerken was already retired and therefore could not serve as a member of a business delegation to acquire contracts for entrepreneurs from Lower Saxony. Von Arnim supported this view with an opinion for the February issue of the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsrecht , which was published in advance on January 14, 2012. An online article by the NDR also refers to the “ban on accepting rewards and gifts”, which sees an “advantage” in “special benefits for private transactions (e.g. interest-free or low-interest loans, entitlement certificates, discounts)”. According to the Cologne finance lawyer Uwe Diekmann, Wulff's loan from Geerkens gave himself an advantage of around 20,000 euros per year compared to normal borrowing without collateral at the then usual eight to ten percent. According to the editor -in- chief of Finanztest, Hermann-Josef Tenhagen , the minimum interest rate for a loan for construction financing in 2008 was 4.6 percent, although it was completely unusual at the time to grant such a loan for 120 percent of the construction cost.

Wulff's spokesman at the time, Olaf Glaeseker , rejected a suspicion of deception and claimed that the request by state parliament members Stefan Wenzel and Ursula Helmhold in the course of the flight ticket affair had been "correctly answered"; there was no business relationship with the company. Wulff regretted that his statements about the personal loan could have created a wrong impression and announced that he would create "transparency" and deposit the relevant documents on the private loan with a law firm. The Council of Elders of the Lower Saxony State Parliament was to discuss on December 20, 2011 whether Wulff had violated Section 5 (4) of the Lower Saxony Ministerial Law by accepting the loan from third parties and by financing holiday trips , according to which "Members of the State Government [... ], even after the termination of their office, are not allowed to accept any rewards or gifts relating to their office ”. However, immediately after the start and without discussion of the matter, the meeting ended with no result at the request of the CDU and FDP with reference to suitable parliamentary instruments. On December 22, 2011, Lothar Hagebölling , the head of the Federal President's Office , released Olaf Glaeseker from his official duties as spokesman for the Federal President. Glaeseker reportedly asked for his release himself.

Despite intensive investigations, there was no indication of any of the above allegations. The relationships with the befriended entrepreneurs and the privileges they granted made "the whole thing appear plausible and not suspect in terms of criminal proceedings," said the Hanover public prosecutor.

In the media it was largely concealed that Egon Geerkens was a long-time friend of the Wulff family and that he was always portrayed as a wealthy business friend of Wulff. It was only in April 2013 that one could read about it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in connection with the investigations of the public prosecutor's office. “The former entrepreneur Egon Geerkens, who was a fatherly friend of von Wulff, also experienced these embarrassments when he was interrogated in June last year and named them later. He had said that he had known Wulff for over 33 years, his father Wulff, who had died in the meantime, that he had financially supported Wulff with his studies, had also helped with money on the occasion of weddings, but he liked Wulff very much. In a contract it was regulated that Wulff should look after the little daughters of Geerkens as a foster father in the event that Geerkens and his wife were to die. So there was a family-like relationship between Geerkens and Wulff. The chief public prosecutor who heard him understood immediately. "

The BW Bank loan

Günther Oettinger (2007)

Shortly after his answer in the Lower Saxony state parliament, Wulff replaced the Geerkens' loan with a loan from the Baden-Württembergische Bank (BW Bank) . Egon Geerkens made contact with the BW-Bank for Christian Wulff. Wulff signed his first contract with BW Bank on March 18, 2010. On March 21, 2010, he signed a short-term, rolling money market loan at an interest rate between 0.9 and 2.1 percent, with which he replaced the personal loan given by Geerkens. The money market loan was replaced by a long-term real estate loan from BW Bank. Günther Oettinger , the then Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, contradicted rumors that he had helped Wulff to obtain the low-interest loan from the state-owned BW Bank. Wulff initially refused to exempt BW Bank from banking secrecy for providing information on details of lending . Experts from the Institute for Financial Services calculated an advantage of 107,800 euros for the BW Bank loan over the entire term of 14.5 years compared to the usual conditions. According to information from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , of the investments of 850,000 to 900,000 euros that the state of Lower Saxony had made in the house for the security of the then Prime Minister, 250,000 euros were included in the valuation of the property for the BW Bank loan.

Before Christmas 2011, Wulff had it explained that he had replaced the money market loan with a regular real estate loan. On December 27, 2011, Wulff's environment confirmed that the new credit conditions should apply from 2012. According to his statement from mid-December, in December 2009 he started "discussions with a private client advisor" at the bank. On December 10th, 2009 the controversial North-South Dialogue took place, a party of Lower Saxony and Baden-Wuerttemberg political, economic and show business representatives at the Wulff and his Stuttgart counterpart Oettinger (at that time he was also chairman of the supervisory board of LBBW.) Had a prominent position. The Financial Times Deutschland said that by accepting the cheap loan, Wulff did not avoid any appearance of a conflict of interests ; As the coordinator for the reform of the Landesbanken in 2007, he certainly also had contacts with the LBBW Board of Management. It is therefore questionable whether he actually selected the bank on the recommendation of Egon Geerkens .

According to the public prosecutor's office, there was no evidence of a legal violation. The public prosecutor stated that “neither the submissions of the complainants nor the previous press releases and the documents submitted by the bank provide sufficient actual evidence of a prosecutable crime”.

Business relationship from Wulff's work as a lawyer

On January 30, 2012 it was announced that - contrary to a statement by Wulff on February 28, 2010 before the Lower Saxony state parliament that there had been "no business relationships with Egon Geerkens in the past ten years" - Geerken's long-standing client and until 2007 also the landlord the office of the law firm Dr. Funk, Prof. Dr. Tenfelde and partner was. In this Wulff worked for more than 15 years, appeared for them as an outside partner and was employed as a freelancer until 2011.

The constitutional lawyer Jörg-Detlef Kühne saw this as a (further) violation of the Lower Saxony constitution.

Wulff's lawyer stated that Wulff had not had any income in the firm since 1994. In addition, he was not a partner of the law firm, so that he was not included in the lease. Kühne pointed out that because of his performance in the letterhead, Wulff was liable like a partner in the law firm.

Media affair: attempt to influence the press

A message to Kai Diekmann on his cell phone mailbox triggered the media affair.

At the beginning of January 2012, Christian Wulff came under criticism again. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported on January 1, 2012 that Wulff tried on December 12, 2011 - one day before the credit affair became known - to contact Kai Diekmann , editor-in-chief of the tabloid Bild , and Mathias Döpfner , CEO of Axel Springer Verlag to prevent reporting by telephone and under threat of criminal charges .

The text of the mailbox message was not published, but numerous newspapers cited passages from it. The wiki “WulffPlag” reconstructed the text from these quotations. Wulff initially refused to publish the phone call on the part of Bild , as requested by its editor-in-chief Diekmann in an open letter on January 5, 2012. After the Bild-Zeitung sent him the transcript of the mailbox message, Wulff made the publication, which he described as a “taboo break”, the responsibility of the Bild-Zeitung.

This was preceded by questions from Bild regarding the loan agreement with Edith Geerkens, which Wulff had presented to Bild in order to dispel rumors about the financing of his house. According to Michael Naumann , he then tried to intervene against the Bild report by telephone with Friede Springer .

The legal assessment of the call is controversial. The former constitutional judge Dieter Grimm denies a violation of the Basic Law, while the rector of the University of Administrative Sciences Joachim Wieland sees a violation of the freedom of the press . The public prosecutor's office in Berlin saw no initial suspicion of attempted coercion or other criminal behavior and closed the proceedings without starting an investigation.

The German Association of Journalists (DJV) opposed any attempts by celebrities to influence critical media coverage. The former editor-in-chief of Spiegel and Süddeutscher Zeitung , Hans Werner Kilz , rated it as “the most normal thing in the world that the telephone rings for an editor-in-chief and a politician is on the line who does not like something”, has “such a foolish approach” but he "has never seen a top politician". The media ethicist Alexander Filipović criticized Wulff's understanding of the media because he “does not see the media as a critical public with an important task, but as a stage on which one can look good and bad”. However, “entertainment journalism ignores the political dimensions and does not live up to its political responsibility”. It later became known that Wulff had tried in the summer of 2011 at the newspaper Welt am Sonntag to prevent a report on the relationship with his half-sister.

In a double interview by ARD and ZDF with Ulrich Deppendorf and Bettina Schausten on January 4, 2012, Wulff admitted errors. He asked for understanding for his call to the "Bild" editor-in-chief Diekmann and said, among other things, that he had not tried to prevent an article regarding his personal loan, but had only asked to postpone the publication for one day. He gave family reasons. That same evening, Bild's deputy editor-in-chief Nikolaus Blome disagreed : "It was a call that clearly had the aim of preventing this reporting."

Further allegations of taking or granting an advantage

Accepted vacation invitations

As part of the credit affair, Christian Wulff submitted a list of six holiday invitations accepted between 2003 and 2010 to his lawyer in December 2011, before his election as Federal President. He then spent a total of six free vacations in the following private rooms: three times he accepted the invitation of Edith and Egon Geerkens, twice to Spain, once to New York at the turn of the year 2009/2010, once to that of Talanx's Supervisory Board Wolf-Dieter Baumgartl to Italy , twice by the couple Angela Solaro-Meyer and Volker Meyer to Norderney. It was not clear whether the friends visited their holiday apartments in each individual case. It is only stated in general that the holidays were "mostly spent together with the respective long-term friends". It is also emphasized that the invitations had no relation to Wulff's public office and are therefore in accordance with the Lower Saxony ministerial law. Therefore, a report to the state government and an exemption to accept a financial advantage were not necessary.

For the criminal lawyer Klaus Bernsmann , these cases are “classics of accepting benefits”; he criticizes the "unusual reluctance" of the public prosecutor.

As Federal President, Wulff rented an apartment in the holiday complex of entrepreneur Carsten Maschmeyer on Mallorca shortly after taking office in 2010 .

Ad campaign for "Better the truth"

In December 2011 it became known that Carsten Maschmeyer had financed the advertising campaign for Hugo Müller-Voggs and Christian Wulff's interview book “Besser die Truth” with 42,731.71 euros from his private assets during the Lower Saxony election campaign in autumn 2007 . The book, in which Wulff describes his private and political life, was also used for election campaign purposes, according to research by “Bild”. Christian Wulff stated that he did not know anything about the background to the financing of the advertising campaign, which was confirmed by a spokesman for Maschmeyer. Half of the edition was bought by party or business friends.

Financing the "North-South Dialogue"

On January 20, 2012, the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the Lower Saxony state government under the then Prime Minister Wulff lied to parliament in 2010 when it stated that there had been "no participation or funding by the state" for the so-called North-South dialogue . The North-South Dialogue was a private, profit-oriented event of the entrepreneur Manfred Schmidt from 2007 to 2009, which was intended to promote cooperation between Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg companies and for which Christian Wulff and Günther Oettinger had taken over the patronage. Contrary to what the government said, the Ministry of Agriculture funded books that were given to visitors at the event.

In addition, the event was supported by service staff from the Hannover Medical School. The MHH assumed an event by the State Chancellery and was asked by the then State Secretary and spokesman Christian Wulff, Olaf Glaeseker , not to issue an invoice. Only after the affair became known did the MH Hannover issue an invoice on January 20, 2012 for 5,245 euros plus organization and clothing fee plus VAT to be borne by the company of organizer Manfred Schmidt.

It is unclear whether Wulff was aware of the state's involvement and thus deliberately answered the request incorrectly. Another member of the government at the time, the current Minister of Finance of Lower Saxony, Hartmut Möllring , stated that he had no knowledge of the financing; he sees himself betrayed by Olaf Glaeseker. However, after an internal review, Möllring announced that Wulff had approved the answer to the request himself and had helped design the final text with handwritten improvements.

At the beginning of February 2012 it was announced that at least the then head of the Lower Saxony State Chancellery, Lothar Hagebölling, had known that Wulff's spokesman, Olaf Glaeseker, had been intensively involved with Manfred Schmidt's support. The SPD MP Karl Lauterbach therefore sees Wulff's statement as a lie and called for Wulff's resignation.

The chairman of the Greens in Lower Saxony's state parliament, Stefan Wenzel , demanded after these allegations became known, contrary to his wait-and-see attitude, the resignation of Wulff and called him a "liar". On the basis of several reports for denigrating the Federal President ( Section 90 StGB ), the Hanover Public Prosecutor's Office checked whether the conduct was punishable and came to the conclusion that this case was a permissible expression of opinion.

Wulff is also said to have personally recruited sponsors for the dialogue, including the then Deutsche Bahn boss Hartmut Mehdorn , contrary to earlier information .

Investigations into the North-South dialogue did not reveal any evidence of legal violations.

Accusation of accepting benefits because of financing the celebration after the election of the Federal President

After Wulff's election as Federal President, the organizer of the North-South Dialogue organized a celebration at his request, the guest list of which had been agreed with Wulff, and financed it; Among other things, sponsors of the North-South Dialogue were present. The state lawyer Hans Herbert von Arnim sees an advantage acceptance by Wulff because of the agreement on the guest list, which is why the public prosecutor must investigate. The public prosecutor's office has started investigations against the organizer Manfred Schmidt for bribery.

Wulff is also said to have personally invited guests to the festival. This emerges from emails that were found on the computer of Wulff's former spokesman Olaf Glaeseker ; the computer was confiscated by the public prosecutor on suspicion of accepting benefits against Glaeseker. Wulff had previously stated that it was a celebration organized for him by Manfred Schmidt .

It is known that Schmidt for the ceremony and for the opportunity of networking required at least in individual cases, entrance fees in the amount of 3,000 euros; Wulff always spoke of a "private celebration" before.

Accusation of using a pre-production model from Audi and a Bobby Car free of charge

At the beginning of February 2012, several newspapers reported that Wulff and his wife had been given a pre-production model of the Audi Q3 from the VW Group free of charge from mid-2011 to December 2011 for “promotional purposes”. Wulff's lawyers contradicted this representation and assume a targeted "false reporting"; an injunction was obtained against the reporting. The Berliner Zeitung , which reported on the free use, does not uphold this claim due to new findings; But she is sticking to her report (which was not challenged in the injunction) that the car was ordered from Audi and delivered to Berlin. According to a report by Spiegel Online, the car was not accepted by Bettina Wulff after it was delivered because a pre-production car cannot be registered as usual and Bettina Wulff did not want to drive with a red license plate.

The participating Audi center in Berlin was also accused of granting Bettina Wulff conditions that were not customary on the market when buying a new Audi Q3 car and providing a rental car of the same type until the vehicle ordered was delivered. The dealership had already been reported because it had given Wulff a Bobby Car on the occasion of his son's birthday and the manager was invited to the 2012 summer party in Bellevue. Wulff rejected all allegations related to the events.

The Berlin public prosecutor's office examined the start of investigations. It was about the bobby car, clothes that were given to Bettina Wulff for the wedding, and the use of the Audi Q3. According to Wulff's lawyers, the bobby car was in Bellevue Palace in the “children's play area” for visiting children. The clothes were taken into account in the tax return. The judicial review did not reveal any rule violations.

Wulff was also accused of violating the Lower Saxony ministerial law because in 2010 he leased a Škoda at the (cheaper) tariff for VW employees; Wulff was able to take advantage of this employee rate because he held a position on the supervisory board as a representative of the state of Lower Saxony, which owns a stake in VW shares.

In these cases, too, the public prosecutor was unable to prove any legal violations. The Berlin public prosecutor's office closed its investigation against the resigned Federal President Christian Wulff because of the acceptance of benefits. There is no initial suspicion of criminal behavior by Wulff, said the spokesman for the prosecution, Martin Steltner, on Friday. According to the Berlin public prosecutor's office, it was about a free bobby car, leasing conditions for an Audi Q3 and clothing sponsorship for Wulff's wife Bettina.

David Groenewold was charged with paying for travel

The film producer David Groenewold paid several travel bills for Wulff with his credit card. Wulff claimed that he always reimbursed Groenewold for these costs in cash.

With regard to a trip to Sylt in 2007, Wulff said he paid the costs for the room to Groenewold in cash at the reception and at the same time paid the additional costs by credit card; Wolfgang Kubicki considered this depiction to be “alien to life” and unreliable. Groenewold called the hotel in mid-January 2012 and asked for receipts from the trip; when the hotel refused to send them, he finally picked them up personally. The opposition leader in the Lower Saxony state parliament Thomas Oppermann spoke of "cover-ups and blackout campaigns"; he based his suspicions on the fact that at the time Groenewold picked up the receipts, the SPD had asked the state government what money he had received as a film producer from the state. Groenewold did not deny that he had requested the receipts from the hotel; but he contradicted the presentation that it was an attempt to cover up.

According to Chief Public Prosecutor Frank Lüttig, this report by the Bild newspaper was decisive for the application to lift Christian Wulff's immunity:

Die Welt : "At what point was this point reached?"
Lüttig : "At the moment when the press read that David Groenewold was trying to get rid of evidence."

“The public prosecutor's office should not have relied on the aforementioned report from the 'Bild' newspaper, explains (lawyer) Sauer. Because on February 14, two days earlier, the Cologne Regional Court issued an interim injunction in which it forbade the newspaper from spreading further that Groenewold in the Hotel City, under threat of a fine of 250,000 euros or six months in custody Hamburg 'demanded that bills and receipts be handed over to him and that' apparently another luxury vacation should be covered up '. This Cologne decision was based, among other things, on a declaration by the Hotel 'Stadt Hamburg', according to which Groenewold had 'at no point in time' asked to 'destroy or manipulate the documents relating to your stay in our house'. "The Springer-Verlag recognized the injunction on June 18 as final.

Wulff had campaigned in 2005 and 2006 for concerns of the film industry, which u. a. Groenewold benefited. In addition, the state of Lower Saxony granted a company in which it was involved a guarantee for four million euros. According to his own statement, the filmmaker has relocated the company to Lower Saxony because Wulff gives “important impulses for the further development of the media landscape with a lot of personal commitment”.

According to Hans Herbert von Arnim , acts of concealment would be an indication of a corruption case. The Hanover Public Prosecutor's Office checked whether an investigation should be initiated into the allegations.

The allegations again led to numerous calls for resignation, including from Thomas Oppermann and Claudia Roth .

Worked on the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 6, 2012, "almost 70 banks, insurance companies and funds" (shareholders of VW AG) demanded "damages totaling 1.8 billion euros" from Wulff; In connection with the failed takeover of Volkswagen by Porsche , Wulff is charged with “failures” and “incorrect information on the capital market”. A memo from the Hanover State Chancellery that became known at the beginning of February 2012 should corroborate this allegation.

“Meanwhile, the financial supervisory authority BaFin has completed its investigation into the role of ex-Federal President Christian Wulff in the failed takeover of VW by Porsche and has submitted a report to the Federal Ministry of Finance. The authority comes to the conclusion that there are no indications that Wulff violated ad hoc obligations during his time as Lower Saxony's Prime Minister and VW Supervisory Board. "

Criticism of dealing with the allegations

Accusation of deliberately misleading the public

Wulff's reactions were often criticized on the grounds that he had presented facts incorrectly or falsely. In his television interview, Wulff said, for example, that an entrepreneur with whom he went on vacation is “retired today, so to speak”, although he was on the supervisory board of an insurance company; He also presented the free vacations as if it were simply a matter of “five or six days there in Italy or seven days with friends, to cook with friends, to have breakfast, to sleep in the guest room”, although the hosts sometimes did not at all, sometimes only briefly. This behavior was often criticized as a “tactical relationship to the truth”, for which the verb “wulffen” was also used.

However, one must also criticize the partly deliberate misleading of the public by the media. The character assassination of Christian Wulff's wife Bettina was particularly striking. The publication of her alleged past in the red-light district in the Berliner Zeitung and its quotation in the ARD program with Günther Jauch in front of an audience of millions was one of the highlights of this smear campaign.

Accusation of broken transparency promise

In the interview broadcast on ARD and ZDF at the beginning of January 2012, Wulff said:

“Tomorrow morning my lawyers will put everything on the Internet. Then every citizen can see every detail of the processes. "

The following day, a six-page summary of the events from the point of view of the law firm Redeker Sellner Dahs by lawyer Gernot Lehr appeared . Several minutes later in the same interview broadcast, however, Wulff had said:

“So with 400 questions - and when they ask what you had to eat at your first wedding and who paid your second and whether you paid your mother's maintenance - and I could now name a thousand more things - and who the clothes has paid for your wife, which were borrowed, which are taxed as a pecuniary benefit, so to speak - then I can only say: I'll be happy to give you the 400 questions, 400 answers. "

In the Legal Tribune Online , Martin W. Huff took the view that the legal questions linked to the announced disclosure could only be resolved by a general summary of what was already known, because otherwise the individual rights of the individual journalists would be affected. On January 12th, Die Zeit , Die Welt , Bild , Der Spiegel , the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau approved the publication of their inquiries. The next day, the world group documented all of its questions and their answers on the Internet. At the same time it became known that on December 23, lawyer Lehr had forwarded press inquiries from the world about Wulff's credit affair to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . On January 18, the above-mentioned law firm posted three document packages with a total of 237 pages on the Internet, with copies of individual inquiries from journalists by e-mail and the corresponding responses, as far as they were released by them (possibly restricted). In the course of further approvals, these documents were later expanded in scope.

Reactions

Law and politics

Public prosecutor's investigation and application for waiver of immunity

On February 16, 2012, the Hanover public prosecutor's office applied for the lifting of Christian Wulff's immunity in order to initiate investigations into accepting and granting benefits. Shortly beforehand, the Lower Saxony State Chancellery had handed over the files on the financing of the North-South Dialogue and on the promise of guarantee to the film entrepreneur Groenewold to the public prosecutor's office. The Berlin public prosecutor's office also examined the initiation of an investigation into accepting benefits. As early as mid-January, several criminal law professors, including Klaus Volk and Thomas Rönnau , had described it as unusual that the public prosecutor's office did not investigate more comprehensively. Bernd Schünemann is of the opinion that there are enough factual indications from the reporting. With the resignation the immunity of the Federal President ended at the same time.

At the end of May 2012, the Berlin public prosecutor's office suspended its examination procedure due to the lack of initial suspicion, as there were no actual indications of an illegal agreement and thus criminal behavior on the part of Wulff. Although he had been granted advantages by companies (a free Bobby Car, favorable leasing conditions for an Audi Q3, clothing sponsorship for Bettina Wulff), this was partly done in a non-transparent manner, but the companies wanted to use Wulff primarily as an advertising medium, not for themselves to provide political advantages.

Action before the State Court

The opposition in Lower Saxony's state parliament filed a lawsuit with the Lower Saxony State Court on February 21, 2012 . She sees the information on the financing of the North-South dialogue as a deception of Parliament.

Withdrawal requests and withdrawal

Shortly after the reporting began, opposition politicians and individual CDU politicians (such as Vera Lengsfeld ) began calling for resignation. Public figures such as the scientist Dieter Grimm , the Internet activist Martin Heidingsfelder and Marcel Reich-Ranicki also called for the Federal President to resign. The SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel moved away from his opinion expressed at the end of December that resignation would lead to a state crisis, and said in early February 2012 that Wulff was “actually no longer a federal president, he only resides in Bellevue Palace”.

After David Groenewold's stay in a hotel on Sylt, which was paid for by David Groenewold in 2007 and allegedly reimbursed in cash, other leading politicians from all parties except the CDU called for resignation; Angela Merkel continued to express her confidence in Wulff.

In the population, approval for Wulff initially fell until his television interview at the beginning of January 2012. According to the ARD-Deutschlandtrend , a narrow majority was in favor of his resignation before the television interview. After the interview, a slim majority was in favor of staying; this number fell again in the course of January. At the beginning of February, 54% of those questioned were in favor of resigning.

For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic there were demonstrations with the aim of persuading the Federal President to resign. The Berlin-based association June 17, 1953 eV made it clear in a declaration that it is “an expression of freedom that has been won to be allowed to demonstrate against a Federal President.” Such a demonstration becomes questionable if people take part in the leadership "At least in the past an apparently disturbed relationship to democratic customs" would have shown. Also, the stated seat of the administrative office of the registering association, House of Democracy, Greifswalder Strasse 4, in this context is more of an “insult to former civil rights activists who gathered there after the collapse of the second dictatorship to campaign for a free and democratic Germany get involved. "

On February 17, 2012 Christian Wulff resigned from the office of Federal President. He justified his step with the lost confidence.

Discussion about the honorary salary

Even before the resignation, two legal expert opinions - one by Hans Herbert von Arnim , the other from the scientific service of the Bundestag - dealt with the question of whether Wulff would receive the so-called honorary salary of around 200,000 euros per year if he resigned . Because the law only provides for a claim in the event of resignation for health or political reasons. Both reports came to the conclusion that it would be a resignation for personal reasons and that Wulff was therefore not entitled to honorary pay. Von Arnim pointed out that Wulff also had no other pension claims and would therefore be “penniless” for years; He interpreted this as a key motive for Wulff to want to remain in office. Arnim's assessment is met with approval and opposition from constitutional lawyers.

The Office of the Federal President announced at the beginning of March 2012 that Wulff was receiving the honorary salary as it was a matter of resigning for political reasons. The Bundestag's budgetary policy committee agreed with this assessment. The competence of the Federal President's Office is disputed in jurisprudence. The Federal Ministry of the Interior is responsible, which is why the decision of the Federal President's Office is illegal.

The question sparked a public discussion about the legitimacy of Wulff and the appropriateness of the honorary salary. At the time of the decision, 84% of the population found it wrong that Wulff should receive the honorary salary. Wulff himself had said a few days before his term in office as Federal President that the honorary salary was too high; you have to make “compromises” there.

Big farewell tattoo

On March 8, 2012, Christian Wulff received a farewell ceremony, the big tattoo of the Bundeswehr in Berlin. Chancellor Merkel and members of the federal government took part as guests. On the other hand, four Bundestag Vice-Presidents , the four former Federal Presidents still alive at the time ( Horst Köhler , Roman Herzog , Richard von Weizsäcker and Walter Scheel ), the President and the Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court canceled their participation.

In the vicinity of the event there was a demonstration with several hundred citizens who wanted to disturb the tattoo by loud vuvuzelage and heckling. The Berlin police put vuvuzelas sure to "the ongoing acoustic disturbance of the ceremony to stop." Nevertheless, the background noises could be heard well even in the castle.

Then Wulff retired to a monastery to relax.

Criticism of the action against Wulff

Evaluation of media coverage

The reporting in the "Wulff Affair" is rated ambivalent. On the one hand, Bild , Spiegel , FAZ and Süddeutsche Zeitung , but also public broadcasters and television stations, are accused of not having complied with their obligation to inform the population about the later allegations that were already recognizable before the election of the Federal President, and are also overly critical to have reported at the expense of Wulff and to have used "manipulative tactics". There was also speculation about a so-called "media campaign". On the other hand, the reporting is praised, since the media are all the more important as part of the public, the fewer other bodies such as the public prosecutor's office and the judiciary acted as controlling bodies.

The Bild-Zeitung's coverage of the “credit affair” was awarded the Henri Nannen Prize in the “Investigative Journalism” category. The award caused a scandal because the editors of the Süddeutsche Zeitung , who were also awarded, rejected their award in protest against the award of the Bild-Zeitung.

The journalist Michael Götschenberg sees the BILD reporting in his book “Der böse Wulff” as a campaign: “At least part of the media was on a mission at the time. In my opinion, it was about removing the man from office. I wouldn't lump all of them together, but at least I would attest the Bild newspaper that they ran a campaign against Wulff. With security. "

A case study by the Otto Brenner Foundation (OBS) was published under the title "BILD and Wulff - pretty best partners" . The media scientist Hans-Jürgen Arlt and the publicist Wolfgang Storz meticulously analyzed the last five years of BILD reporting on Christian Wulff. The study shows the dubious role that BILD played in the Wulff affair and how it used Wulff's call in a manipulative manner.

Criticism of the public prosecutor's office after the acquittal

In retrospect, there is the view that the investigations by the public prosecutor were massively exaggerated. After the latter withdrew its appeal, attorney Gernot Fritz filed a criminal complaint against officials of the Hanover public prosecutor. He saw a well-founded suspicion of perversion of the law and the violation of private secrets ( Section 203 (2) No. 1 StGB). The criminal complaint goes back to the intensive press contacts of some investigating prosecutors to journalists. Again and again, the results of investigations that were considered incriminating reached the media, which could not just have happened by chance. In addition, the principle of proportionality (No. 4 RiStBV ) was grossly violated during the public prosecutor's investigations. With a view to the specific allegations, the establishment of a 28-person investigation team with four public prosecutors is far from what would be considered proportionate. The lawyer Gernot Fritz is co-author of the Bonn Commentary on the Basic Law and was deputy head of the Office of the Federal President until 1999. In his opinion, the suspicion arises that "the law enforcement authorities did not limit themselves to the necessary investigation, but pursued the goal of avoiding the legally required suspension of the investigation by constantly following new leads that were not obvious to substantiate the allegation . "

Also Heribert Prantl of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, himself a former prosecutor and judge, represented on 1 March 2014 (after Wulff's acquittal by the district court) the view that the investigation against Wulff had a pattern of disproportionality. “It may be that two years ago, in view of the widespread outrage stoked by the Bild newspaper, the public prosecutor had little choice but to initiate investigations in order not to be accused of letting go of the 'big ones'. Nevertheless, one has to ask the question that Roman Herzog raised after Wulff's resignation - namely, the question of whether the constitution doesn't have to be changed so that something like this can never happen again: In the case of a serious crime by a Federal President, according to the German constitution Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe to decide whether he will be removed from office. In the case of comparatively minor alleged offenses, which then turn out to be non-offenses, it is sufficient for some public prosecutor to come along. That must never happen again. "

Culture

Satirical reappraisal

The "Wulff Affair" was the subject of numerous caricatures, satirical articles and jokes, including at the 2011/12 carnival session. On Twitter , mocking film titles were distributed under the hashtag #wulfffilme . The satirical magazine Extra 3 of the NDR worked Loriots known Sketch The lottery winners on the affair; WDR 5 published a fictitious recording of Wulff's call on Kai Diekmann's answering machine. Oliver Kalkofe parodied the ARD / ZDF interview from January 4, 2012 in a video published on Youtube in mid-February 2012.

Some companies took advantage of the Wulff affair by alluding to it in their advertising.

In the literature

Purely GOLD in Elfriede Jelinek's prose work . a stage essay from 2012/2013, a debate between B: Brünnhilde and W: Wotan, the wanderer on the tracks of Richard Wagner's work Der Ring des Nibelungen , Wulff's real estate loan is one of two German scandals of the winter of 2011/12 picked up. The text establishes links between economic and political corruption . The second scandal concerns the attacks and murders of the NSU . Jelinek deals critically and polemically with German heroic symbolism and economic abstinence.

TV movie

On February 25, 2014 (two days before Wulff's acquittal), Sat.1 broadcast the docudrama The resignation of Nico Hofmann about Wulff's last 68 days as Federal President. Kai Wiesinger received the Bavarian television award "Blauer Panther " in 2014 for his role as Wulff .

literature

  • Nikolaus Harbusch, Martin Heidemanns: Wulff affair . Federal President for 598 days - the story of a failure. 1st edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf , Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86265-155-9 (note: the authors are editors of the Bild newspaper).
  • Michael Götschenberg: The bad Wulff? The story behind the story and the role of the media. 1st edition. Plassen Verlag, Kulmbach 2013, ISBN 978-3-86470-084-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 8, 2013: Files in the Wulff case
  2. ^ TAZ of March 19, 2013
  3. ↑ Investigations against ex-Federal President: Wulff rejects the public prosecutor's offer at Spiegel Online , April 9, 2013 (accessed on April 9, 2013)
  4. ↑ A historical process . The daily mirror. April 13, 2013. Retrieved December 12, 2013.
  5. ^ Public prosecutor's office brings charges against Wulff . Southgerman newspaper. April 12, 2013. Retrieved December 12, 2013.
  6. ↑ Documentation: The indictment against Wulff and Groenewold . Mirror online. April 12, 2013. Retrieved December 12, 2013.
  7. ↑ Press release in the proceedings against C. Wulff et al. Hanover Regional Court, accessed on February 27, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Martin U. Müller: Accusation of taking advantage: Wulff has to go to court. spiegel.de, August 27, 2013, accessed on August 29, 2013 .
  9. ^ Acquittal for Christian Wulff , süddeutsche.de from February 27, 2014.
  10. ^ Corruption process: Public prosecutor appeals against Wulff's acquittal , Spiegel Online from March 5, 2014
  11. ^ Revision of the public prosecutor's office withdrawn ( memento of July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), press release of the Hanover public prosecutor's office of June 13, 2014, accessed on June 13, 2014
  12. ↑ a b Oral inquiries according to § 47 of the rules of procedure of the Lower Saxony state parliament: Ministerial law, donations and sponsoring: two kinds of standards, two kinds of morals, two kinds of law? (PDF; 382 kB) Lower Saxony State Parliament, printed matter 16-2160, February 10, 2010, accessed on December 16, 2011 .
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  17. ↑ a b "Bild" contradicts the representation of the Federal President . In: Deutschlandfunk . 5th January 2012
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  19. ↑ a b Gernot Lehr, page no longer available , search in web archives: journalist inquiries and answers. Part 1@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / pdf.redeker.de (PDF; 1.9 MB), January 18, 2012, p. 16f.
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