POLITICS-GERMANY: Anti-Corruption Watchdog Calls For Transparency

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN, Feb 18 2000 (IPS) - Germany needs to develop a new culture of transparency on how politics is financed and influenced, says the anti-corruption watchdog organisation, Transparency International (TI), based here.

Against the background of the recent wave of scandals in Germany, involving illegal party funding received by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democratic Union (CDU), TI, this week, presented a programme of action aimed at achieving full transparency in political lobbying and funding.

“The recent revelations are a shock lesson which tell us that Germany finally needs to confront the wider European reality of corruption and illegal party-financing,” said Michael H. Wiehen, Chairperson of TI Germany and member of the international TI Board.

“The essence of our demands is that we need to overcome the prevailing culture of secrecy to make political lobbying and the funding of politics fully transparent,” Wiehen said in a statement.

The reform programme calls for new ceilings on political donations by companies and other legal persons, the full public disclosure of assets and interests of all parliamentarians and cabinet ministers, a lower threshold above which party donations need to be made public, and stricter sanctions – including prison terms – for breaches of political funding provisions.

TI declared in 1997 that regulation of the operations of all international banking centres must be improved so as to ensure that assets under their control are governed by agreed international norms and that illicitly gained assets can be traced, frozen and forfeited.

“This should include exclusion from the international monetary system of off-shore banking centres, which fail to meet these standards. Banking secrecy must not provide a shield for criminals and obstruct the exposure of corruption,” Wiehen said.

Commenting on the sale of German tanks to Saudi-Arabia in the early nineties which was facilitated by major bribe payments, TI- Germany’s chairperson said: “The illegal funding of the ruling CDU party confirms the observation that bribery abroad is a favourite entry point for illegal party financing. We have seen similar cases in France, Belgium and Italy – this is a Europe-wide problem.” ” Transparency International noted that Feb 15 marked the first anniversary of the entry-into-force of the OECD Anti-Corruption Convention that makes it a criminal offence for corporations to bribe foreign official.

“Against the background of the latest scandals it is all the more urgent that Italy, France and the United Kingdom fully implement the new ‘ECD Convention’, TI Germany chief said.

The Convention represents an important step in the concerted international effort to criminalise bribery and reduce the rampant corruption in world economies. It aims to stop the flow of bribe money for the purpose of obtaining international business deals and, to strengthen domestic anti-corruption efforts aimed at raising standards of governance and increasing civil society participation.

The following countries have deposited their instruments of ratification/acceptance of the Convention with the OECD: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

In Germany, the legislation to implement the OECD Convention was passed in Sep 1998.

The scandal began with the emergence of a series of undeclared contributions given to the CDU, by arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber, when Kohl was German chancellor. Kohl has also admitted that he ran a network of secret CDU accounts containing a stash of anonymous donations controlled by a former party official nicknamed ‘the Postman’.

Since then a series of revelations has brought to light further murky financial dealings, implicating almost the entire senior CDU leadership.

In January Kohl’s hand-picked successor, CDU chief Wolfgang Schaeuble, admitted that he had also taken money from Shreiber. He was forced to step down as party leader this week.

According to German law, political donations of more than 10,260 US Dollars are to be declared. The funding scandal, h owever, involves millions of dollars’ worth of secretly donated funds.

Kohl has repeatedly refused to name any of the secret donors, saying he cannot break the promises he made to them. The most serious allegation is that the donations were kept secret because they influenced key government decisions.

In January auditors investigating the finances of the CDU said they had failed to trace the origin of nearly six million US Dollars paid to the party in secret campaign donations.

The German federal parliament, Bundestag, has ordered the party to pay back about 21 million US Dollars in state financing as punishment for violating strict political funding rules.

The CDU faces further stiff fines. German television channel ARD also reported in Jan that former French President Francois Mitterand had arranged payments of about 15,7 million US Dollars to the CDU, through a French oil company.