Chancellor Kohl wants a reference to God in any
future European Union constitution. (D Telegraph 1/2/98) The demand to have
There will be no reference to God in the article on values presented by the Convention's presidium during the plenary session on Thursday. A presidium member told the EUobserver that the body wanted to concentrate on "very essential values" and not "on specific issues." (EUobserver.com 06.02.2003)
Following the suicide of his wife, Helmut Kohl is now indirectly linked to a suspicious death in France. Diethelm Höner, a German millionaire friend of Helmut and Hannelore Kohl, was found dead in his villa in Cannes on 17th January. He had been the Kohls’ informal financial adviser, running the affairs of Hannelore Kohl’s charitable foundations. The 60 year-old financier had apparently fallen downstairs but French prosecutors are now investigating the death. Höner was connected with the Elf scandal, in which bribes were allegedly paid by the French oil company to Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic party. Höner, whose fortune ran to some £ 1 million, had told friends that he felt threatened for several years. He lived in Cannes in a state of permanent fear and was obsessed by security. According to a document leaked to a French paper, he knew about the diversion of large sums of money via the German intelligence services; he alleged in this document that most of the aid given by Germany to Russia had been stolen and that the Russians were using the stolen money to finance industrial espionage in computer and bio-technology. Höner also knew Dieter Holzer, a German businessmen living in Monte Carlo, who is now on the run following the revelation that he took money from the bribes paid by Elf for the purchase of the Leuna oil refinery. The French authorities are treating the death as suspicious because, according to a preliminary medical report, the position of the body was not compatible with a fall. And the security cameras which otherwise filmed everything in his villa were mysteriously not functioning on the night of his death. [Laurent Valdiquié, Le Parisien, 9th July 2001; Handelsblatt, 9th July 2001]The European Foundation
Helmut Kohl has buried many bodies in his time, and now he has buried his wife Hannelore. Earlier this month, while Mr Kohl was in Berlin, she committed suicide by taking an overdose of painkillers and sleeping tablets at their home in Ludwigshafen, on the Rhine. The way he disposed of her body was characteristic, combining elements of mendacity, effrontery and the ability to dominate those around him. He assembled the entire German establishment for a requiem mass in a Roman Catholic cathedral for a Protestant who had committed suicide. The German media had already, almost without exception, swallowed Mr Kohl’s explanation for her death, which was that she was suffering from such an agonising allergy to light that for the last 15 months she had only been able to leave the house under cover of darkness. Doctors have been unable, from the scant details given, to identify her illness, and she was buried without post mortem. Some people have reported that she seemed well able to withstand daylight within the last few months. A friend of mine recently saw her going for a walk in the Grünewald forest on the edge of Berlin, and Mr Kohl himself alluded, on the day before she died, to their forthcoming summer holiday in Austria. Only Stern magazine ventured to point out that the official account did not hang together. It also remarked that a few weeks ago, when the Kohls’ son Peter married a Turkish woman, Elif Sözen, in Istanbul, Mr Kohl attended the wedding not with Mrs Kohl, but with his personal assistant, Juliane Weber, who started working for him in Mainz in 1964 and has long been his right-hand aide. What Mrs Kohl thought of this we may never know. (Spectator 28/7/01)
Helmut Kohl won a court battle to prevent publication of hundreds of his private conversations taped during the Cold War by East German spies. The Berlin court's ruling in favour of the former German Chancellor is likely to set a precedent that will make it more difficult for academics and journalists to gain access to files about prominent politicians compiled by the Stasi secret police. Mr Kohl's political enemies have maintained that the man who ruled Germany for 16 years wanted special protection reporters least partly because he feared the Stasi might have picked up details relating to an network funds and Swiss bank accounts set up by his party in the Seventies and Eighties. In 1991 Mr Kohl signed laws saying that when possible Stasi documents should be released to help expose the wrongs of the East German regime. (Daily Telegraph 5/7/01)
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has been let off the hook as criminal proceedings against him for corruption have been called off in exchange for the payment of a fine of £100,000. Half of this will go to the state and half to a charity, donations which Kohl has already agreed to make anyway. In all likelihood, therefore, Kohl will get off without any prosecution into the system of secret bank accounts he created in order to receive anonymous donations to the party he headed for 20 years. [Die Welt, 2nd March 2001]
The former German Chancellor and architect of the Maastricht treaty, Helmut Kohl, has been declared guilty by magistrates in Bonn of lying about the use to which he put the secret monies he received from donors. It is now alleged that he used some DM 2.1 million for electoral campaigning in West Germany, whereas he had always alleged that it had been given to CDU social committees in East Germany. Mr. Kohl confirmed that the magistrates had concluded that he had lied and confirmed that a preliminary criminal investigation for deceit was now being opened against him. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 7th August 2000]
According to unconfirmed reports, investigations into corruption allegations against the former German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, will be dropped if he pays a fine of DM 200,000 (£67,000). Such an outcome, which is apparently not unknown in the German criminal code, is neither a punishment nor an admission of guilty but an administrative procedure. Once implemented, moreover, it protects the defendant from any further investigations. On the other hand, this could mean that he would no longer be able to claim the right to silence before the parliamentary committee looking into the corruption allegations, because he would no longer be able to claim that any declarations on his part would prejudice the judicial process. Under such circumstances, Kohl might be forced to declare the names of the secret donors, something which he has hitherto refused to do on the grounds that it is a matter of personal honour for him to maintain their anonymity. There might even be a way out of this for Kohl, however. A provision in the German constitution allows Bundestag deputies to refuse to answer questions about matters connected with their activities as MPs. Kohl could claim that the moneys were paid to him in his capacity as an MP and therefore claim the right to further silence. [Die Welt, 26th July 2000]
Helmut Kohl admitted that he took money for the CDU in the run-up to the 1990 election, three years earlier than previously admitted. Auditors found a further £3m of unexplained donations. (FT 28/3/0)
Germany’s embattled CDU party admitted it operated an extraordinary web of secret onshore and offshore accounts run in parallel with its official finances, for three decades. Releasing statements from two of the key people who managed their financial affairs since the 70’s, the party opened a Pandora’s Box of secret accounts, safe deposit boxes in Switzerland and million mark payments made via intelligence services to political parties in Spain and Portugal. The revelations put the spotlight on Helmut Kohl, the former Chancellor. Much of the money stemmed from German industrialists and subsequently declared illegal by the Constitutional Court. Up to DM6m may have come from Siemens but they denied this. (FT 5/2/0)
An alleged secret financial deal between former Chancellor Kohl and President F Mitterand, intended to expedite German reunification, blocked British Petroleum’s bid for East German’s most lucrative oil and petrol concession. The bid was never given serious consideration. The deal was awarded to Elf. Elf is alleged to have paid £28m in backhanders personally authorised by President Mitterand. A high-ranking informant from M Mitterand’s circle denied that a £10m donation to Mr. Kohl’s CD party was illicit. "It was not a bribe. The money was for an election campaign. The payment was in the interest of the state – for Europe". Sunday Telegraph 30/2/00)
The architect of European Monetary Union, the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, is appearing before the parliamentary committee of enquiry into the illicit funding of the Christian Democrat party he led for twenty years. Kohl’s appearance before the committee, which is investigating his tax evasion and secret bank accounts, was given added piquancy because of the new accusation that his office indulged in the massive and systematic destruction of sensitive documents relating to the bribery accusations, in the last days of his term in office in 1998. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, two-thirds of the data kept on computer have been destroyed, including documentation relating to the privatisation of the Leuna oil refinery – the very operation which is at the centre of the allegation that bribes were paid to Kohl at that time. Other deals, such as the sale of tanks to Saudi Arabia or the purchase of property from a major CDU donor, are at the centre of the corruption allegations into which the German parliament is currently pursuing investigations. In total, some 3 gigabytes of material are said to have been destroyed, equivalent to 1.2 million pages of paper. A leaked report on all this has been submitted to the relevant Bundestag committee: it has only fanned the flames of suspicion that bribes were paid in the course of these various transactions. [Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26th June 2000]
THE political legacy of Helmut Kohl is disintegrating before our eyes. His carefully guarded reputation for probity has been damaged by revelations that he relied on slush funds during his 25-year tenure as chairman of the Christian Democratic Union. Secret donations were laundered through a network of accounts, almost certainly in violation of the laws governing party finances in Germany. The scandal that has engulfed Mr Kohl started in November with the disclosure that the accountant who ran his secret financial system received a suitcase containing about £350,000 in cash from an arms dealer in the car park of a Swiss shopping centre. Rezzo Schlauch, the Greens' chief whip said, "That is a suitcase deal and suitcase deals reek of illegality".The press has reacted with scorn. Arms dealers are not known for their charity. (Daily Telegraph London 2/12/99 & 3 January 2000)
The continuing fall-out from the CDU corruption scandal has continued to cause reverberations in Germany. Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl has threatened to use all legal means at his disposal to prevent the publication of transcripts from telephone conversations he had while in office, taken from phone-tappings by the East German security service, the Stasi. This follows the revelation that the Stasi knew of the illegal financing of the CDU for some 20 years. Kohl said that the use of these tapes would be unacceptable because the Federal Republic was a state of law while the German Democratic Republic had been a criminal regime. According to the Welt am Sonntag, Kohl has been under Stasi surveillance since he was 20 years old, the time when he entered politics. [Handelsblatt, 3rd April 2000]. But the Federal Interior Ministry did confirm on Monday 3rd April that all the Stasi phone-tapping documents in the possession of West German authorities were destroyed in 1990, on the orders of the Kohl cabinet. The ministry added that such a decision would be impossible today because the law on Stasi documents forbids it. [Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4th April 2000]. Parliamentary leaders of Germany's main political parties agreed to forbid transcripts of illegal phone taps (by Stasi) being used by the special committee investigating financial irregularities in the CDU. (FT 10/5/00)
GERMAN MPs have threatened Helmut Kohl with prison if he refuses to say who gave him secret cash donations while he was leader of the Christian Democratic Union. Mr Kohl has admitted that between 1993 and 1998 he received about £100,000 a year from donors who insisted on anonymity, and has said he will not disclose their names. Millions suspect that secret payments could have influenced decisions taken by his government in his 16 years as chancellor. Mr Kohl's has admitted that he accepted donations which were not declared in the party's published accounts, which is a breach of the law on party funding and is likely to make his position as the party's honorary chairman increasingly untenable. The Berliner Zeitung argued yesterday that a lawbreaker cannot also make the laws and predicted that Mr Kohl would have to resign as an MP. (D Telegraph 21/12/99)
Germany's Christian Democrat opposition suffered another blow when its leadership was forced to admit that up to £3.2 million had been found in party accounts with no record of where the money came from. Mr Kohl, the former Chancellor has been forced to resign his position as honorary party chairman. (Daily Telegraph 20/1/00) The senior official responsible for his party finances has committed suicide (D Telegraph 21/1/00). THE family of a Christian Democratic budget expert who committed suicide after being brushed by the Kohlgate corruption scandal is calling for an autopsy and is pressing the police to look more deeply into his death. "As yet, suicide has not been firmly established as the cause of death," said Wolfgang Wackers, a lawyer representing the widow of Wolfgang Hallen, who was found hanging in his bathroom last Thursday. The political mood is darkening. It was revealed yesterday that a second Christian Democrat, Dr Maro Meschkat, committed suicide recently by throwing himself into the Baltic Sea. He was on the party executive of Schleswig-Holstein, which is under pressure to present a clean image because regional elections will be held there next month. (The Times January 24 2000). GERMANY'S Christian Democrats admitted yesterday that the former Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, controlled slush funds worth more than £4 million, and promised to investigate claims that he received millions more from the late French President, François Mitterrand. (The Times 25/1/00)
THE German secret service employed two figures in the Kohl scandal, it has emerged, something that raises questions about the possible involvement of intelligence agents in the channelling of foreign funds into party coffers. The two businessmen pivotal to the financing scandals in the Christian Democratic Union are the arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber, who admits handing over quantities of cash to party leaders, and Dieter Holzer, who admits having received the equivalent of £16 million for his part in securing an East German refinery contract for Elf Aquitaine. Western intelligence sources say that both were on the books of the Munich-based Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the equivalent of MI6. Herr Schreiber's stewardship of Strauss family investments earned him a place in the salons as well as his niche in the intelligence service. One guest at his Swiss home, who is said to have received over £1 million from Herr Schreiber, was Holger Pfahls, head of the counter-espionage service and later a junior minister in the Defence Ministry. The Swiss have issued an international arrest warrant against Herr Pfahls. (The Times January 26 2000). BP was prevented from buying the East German oil business that was awarded to Elf-Aquitane, the French government owned purchaser. BP was led by Lord Simon of Highbury, Chairman of Business in Europe. (Eurofaq posting 31/1/00)
Germany's embattled Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on Friday admitted it had operated an extraordinary web of secret onshore and offshore accounts, run in parallel to its official finances, for three decades. Releasing statements from two of the key people who managed its financial affairs since the 1970s, the party opened a Pandora's box of secret accounts, safe deposit boxes in Switzerland and million D-Mark payments made via the intelligence services to political parties in Spain and Portugal.(FT 5/2/00)