While Robert Habeck’s (Greens) Federal Ministry of Economics is being confronted with accusations of nepotism, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) is holding back on criticism of what happened to State Secretary Patrick Graichen.
“Certainly it is advisable to create transparency there now,” he said at the beginning of the “best man affair” in early May. But he considers some allegations to be “disproportionate”.
In the best man affair, Lindner is surprisingly quiet
One motive for Lindner’s self-restraint compared to his former favorite opponent could be that a kind of friend with a prominent job is also favored in his ministry: a party friend. The entrepreneur and former FDP treasurer Harald Christ is to move into the Commerzbank supervisory board at the end of May. Annual remuneration: EUR 80,000 plus attendance fees.
The decision had already become known in November last year. The criticism is new: “We consider Christian Lindner’s posting of a close personal confidant without public office to the board of Commerzbank to be highly problematic,” says Aurel Eschmann from the Lobby Control association. “The fact that he is an entrepreneur and lobbyist himself only exacerbates this problem.”
A special selection procedure or an advertisement is not planned in this context.
Federal Ministry of Finance to fill the posts for the Commerzbank Supervisory Board
The Federal Ministry of Finance justifies the choice of personnel on request with these words: It is “important to attract personalities with economic expertise from the private sector in order to manage public sector investments in an entrepreneurial manner”. A special selection process or a call for tenders is “not provided for” for this purpose.
This is exactly what the anti-corruption association Transparency International is upset about: “Even if the current rules of the federal government allow an appointment by appointment, a neutral, comprehensible selection process for such an important position in the government mandate would be necessary in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest”, says Norman Loeckel, head of the Politics working group.
With a stake of 15.6 percent, the federal government is the largest single shareholder in the bank. In the global financial crisis in 2008/2009, he saved it from collapse with more than 18 billion taxpayers’ money and, because of his shares, is allowed to send two representatives to the supervisory board.
The election at the general meeting is a matter of form. In addition to Christ, Jutta Dönges is to be confirmed as a member of the supervisory board, formerly managing director of the federal finance agency and currently chief financial officer of the nationalized energy company Uniper.
Harald Christ operates outside of government access. He earned millions as an entrepreneur and bank manager. Today he runs the lobbyist company “Christ & Company Consulting” in Berlin. Christ was in the SPD for a long time and was considered a ministerial hope there, but switched to the FDP in 2020 and took over the office of treasurer there until 2022.
With the supervisory board post, Christ will maintain contacts that he can also use for his consulting company. Lobby control spokesman Eschmann fears “immense conflicts of interest”. Harald Christ did not comment on this when asked.
The minister has already given speeches for Christ twice
Is Christ more than a party friend for Lindner? What is certain is that the Federal Minister of Finance has twice upgraded Christ events with exclusive speech appearances. Lindner spoke at the presentation of the Christ book “Future Festival: How we must seize the opportunities of the 1920s” in April 2022 and also honored his “Berliner Salon” at the end of October.
The fact that Lindner sometimes lacks intuition here was shown by his video greeting for BBBank, also last year. The bank is financing the minister’s private house purchase with a loan worth millions. The eulogy, with which Lindner intertwined office and private life, brought him an investigation by the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office for allegations of corruption. Investigations did not follow.
The transparency that Lindner recommends to his cabinet colleague Habeck in the “best man affair” he now only wants to create to a limited extent. His ministry does not want to say whether the minister is friends with Christ. “Questions that concern the private sphere of the minister cannot be answered by the Federal Ministry of Finance,” it says. Christ was probably not a guest at the much-noticed wedding of the minister last year: his lawyer said his party friend was “not present” at “private events of Mr. Lindner”.
The minister also does not want to officially vouch for the personnel matters that he – presumably single-handedly – enforced. The decision in favor of Christ was made “in the management” of the house, it says formally. Who originally came up with the idea should remain unsaid.
