In connection with a large donation by the real estate investor Christoph Gröner to the Berlin CDU, the Berlin left asked the Bundestag President Bärbel Bas to review the party donation.
According to the party law, parties are not allowed to accept donations that are “obviously granted in anticipation of or in return for a specific economic or political advantage,” writes Left Country Managing Director Sebastian Koch in a letter addressed to Bas, which is available in the Tagesspiegel.
On this basis, he asks to check whether the Berlin CDU was authorized in the year before the 2021 election “to accept this donation and whether it is a prohibited influence donation”.
He would also like an examination of the political demands that Gröner linked to his donation and quotes a statement by Gröner in the Tagesspiegel podcast “Berliner & Pancakes”.
Here Gröner explained on Friday in relation to the donations: “I made one single demand of Mr. Wegner, and that was that I said: ‘Children in the children’s home who are disabled should please get the same set of clothes in the future like children who are not disabled.’ (…) That is fixed in writing, so to speak.”
Gröner contradicts attempts to exert influence
The real estate entrepreneur had donated a total of 820,000 euros to the CDU in 2020. On Tuesday, Gröner Family Office GmbH denied a connection between the donation and the claim. In the last few days, a public discussion has arisen that “would like to construct” this connection.
However, Gröner publicly expressed this specific demand for the first time in 2021. In an interview with “Deutschlandfunk” he even mentioned “three conditions”.
According to his wish, “children in the children’s home who are disabled should get just as much money for their clothes as the non-disabled”. Gröner also said in connection with the donations, “If the Federal Constitutional Court does not abolish the rent cap, then I would also like the CDU not to abolish it, but to modify it.”
As a third condition, the real estate entrepreneur spoke of a “communication level” that should ensure that disadvantaged policies for children in children’s homes are avoided.
Society should “not focus on party donations, but on equal opportunities for children,” Gröner wrote in his statement. “All children should receive equal financial support. This also applies to clothing flat rates. We in our country need to start talking about other things, especially injustices.”
