What lies behind the German Christian Democrats financial scandal?
Hardly a day passes without new headlines appearing about the financial machinations of the former German Chancellor and long-serving Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Chairman Helmut Kohl. The man who was, until recently, celebrated as one of the greatest European statesmen and “Chancellor of German unity” has now become the focal point of fierce criticism. “We learn something new each day,” Senior Public Prosecutor Bernd König told the press in Bonn, saying he did not exclude the possibility of a preliminary criminal investigation against the ex-chancellor. König said there were “initial suspicions of embezzlement,” and added that “fraud, and possibly money laundering come into consideration”. Kohl has admitted accepting illicit contributions to the CDU’s party finances, but has refused to reveal the sources of these donations. In the Bundestag (federal parliament) a committee of inquiry was set up in order to investigate the CDU’s financial schemes. Committee chairman Volker Neumann
