Germany

Kohl pays fine to avoid trial

Thu 8 Feb 2001 21.04 EST

Helmut Kohl, Germany's longest-serving chancellor and the architect of its reunification, last night agreed to pay a £100,000 fine rather than stand trial for accepting illegal party donations. His decision looked certain to hasten the end of a scandal that once threatened to shake Germany's democracy to its foundations.

Justice ministry officials in DŸsseldorf had earlier given their blessing to a deal negotiated between Mr Kohl's lawyers and prosecutors who have been investigating him for the past 13 months.

Under the terms of the agreement, which has yet to be approved by a court in the former federal capital of Bonn, the prosecutors would shelve their inquiry in return for payment of the fine. According to a statement from his lawyers, Mr Kohl said last October he would agree to the fine "to avoid a lengthy legal process that would be a great burden to him and his family".

The fine is a stiff one, but the former chancellor has considerable financial resources. Last year he contributed DM700,000 to pay separate fines imposed on his party. The chancellor had earlier admitted breaking the law on party funding, but refused to provide crucial information to investigators.

Yesterday's deal was the latest of several indications that Mr Kohl has reached an understanding with the governing Social Democrats to end more than a year of scandal and tension.

Members of his own party, the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), yesterday claimed that the affair had been blown out of proportion. Prosecutors in Bonn have been considering whether to bring charges against Mr Kohl since January last year, after he admitted hiding the source of campaign donations while chancellor from 1982 to 1998. Following his confession, it emerged that millions of pounds had been secretly accepted by his party in the 25 years that he was its leader.

Under the terms of a law introduced by Mr Kohl's government, substantial donors in Germany must be identified to prevent parties swapping favours for cash if elected. However, Mr Kohl has refused to disclose the identity of the CDU's benefactors, saying that he had given them his word of honour not to do so.

Professor Hans Herbert of the School for Administrative Studies in Speyer said: "Kohl's concealment of the names of his donors is a continuing violation of the party [funding] law and even of the constitution. I cannot understand the decision of the Bonn prosecution service."

The affair began after it emerged that CDU officials had accepted a case stuffed with notes from a businessman. Karl-Heinz Schreiber was the intermediary in an arms deal that had been approved by Mr Kohl's government. A parliamentary inquiry was set up but last month its Social Democrat chairman said it had uncovered no evidence. Mr Kohl has refused to answer many of the inquiry's questions on the grounds that the answers could have an impact on the criminal investigation.

Almost every indication suggests the affair is passing into history with the active co-operation of Gerhard Schršder's centre-left government. Earlier this week, it ignored pleas from the parliamentary inquiry and deported to France one of the few men who could shed light on claims that the CDU accepted a huge kickback from the French oil company Elf Aquitaine.

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