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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 27 Jan. - 2 Feb. 2000 Issue No. 466
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Developed corruption
By Gamal Nkrumah
In truth, the rich nations of the North have more in common with their poor counterparts of the developing world in the South than at first meets the eye. North and South have strikingly parallel inadequacies: their political establishments are rotten to the core. Democracies deceptively lend legitimacy to corrupt politico-economic systems, but political stability, it appears, is inextricably intertwined with institutionalised corruption.
No, this is not some wacky new comedy -- Europe's answer to America's Watergate. It is a deadly serious affair; a tragedy not half as funny as Monicagate's much ado about nothing. In fact, the crisis that has rocked Germany after the 10th anniversary of German reunification is not even about former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl -- after all, Kohl's place in history was assured when he cleverly presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. Above all, this scandal is an eye-opener for those of us who have long been naive enough to believe that African, Asian and former Soviet Union republics are economically backward chiefly because of institutionalised corruption.
Germany was hardly the logical country to expect a scandalous storm to hit. We have become accustomed to hearing of African and Asian military despots robbing the state treasuries and stashing the money in slush funds, but we instinctively think of Germans as disciplined and efficient. When it turns out that Germany's longest serving chancellor of the 20th century funnelled secretly-donated funds, or bribes, through a network of clandestine accounts and refuses to identify the donors who secretly gave him $1 million, our ears prick up.
Yes, we now all know that Kohl lied to parliament. It is also a fair guess to assume that at least some of the donations received during the Kohl years by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) -- then the ruling party -- were bribes or rewards for services rendered by Kohl and his party. The natural indication is that anonymous donors might have directly dictated policies in the Kohl era.
So government decisions were bought during Kohl's administration. Breech of trust? Maybe, but Germany is hardly the only country in Europe to hear the howling winds of corruption whistling past its door. Financial scandals have recently hit Britain, France and Italy. Corruption is most certainly not a specifically German malaise; it is a disease that now appears to have ravaged Europe for decades. The European Union itself cannot present a clean bill of health. Edith Cresson, the former EU education commissioner, appointed her dentist to an extremely lucrative EU research contract.
The campaign funding scandal surrounding Kohl took on Pan-European proportions last Sunday when allegations that the government of former French President Francois Mitterrand paid $15.7 million to support Kohl's re-election in 1994. The money was ostensibly transferred as part of bribes totalling $44 million, allegedly paid by France's Elf-Aquitaine for its 1992 purchase of the former East German Leuna refinery.
In classic espionage style, French and German secret services apparently met regularly with middlemen in Le Richemond Hotel, Geneva, to make the payments. Funds were supposedly channelled by French businessman Andre Guelfi to a secret account in Liechtenstein, under the name of German businessman and former intelligence agent Dieter Holzer. Likewise, unsourced funds were allegedly deposited into a Geneva bank account controlled by French intelligence agent Pierre Letier.
Helmut Kohl
The man who publicly treated the former Russian President Boris Yeltsin like an errant child might well have been privately teaching him how to steal from state coffers. The German statesman who lambasted his compatriots in the former East Germany for Communist corruption and derided the nascent Russian and East European democracies as the poor relations of the West, knew all too well what the multi-party democracy he urged them to adopt was all about.
Amidst growing calls for Kohl to resign his parliamentary seat -- a move that would strip him of parliamentary immunity and make him liable to more severe criminal penalties -- the German and European media is increasingly focusing on the ramifications of the scandal. Kohl's corruption undoubtedly harms Germany's endeavours to assume a leadership role in Europe. The implication is that postwar political stability in Germany has been nurtured and sustained by institutionalised corruption.
The industrially and technologically-advanced nations of the North ought to resolve their own corruption muddles before offering leadership to poorer nations. It is an ironic twist that a much-esteemed leader of a wealthy and highly influential nation -- a veritable pillar of the international community of nations -- would end up being exposed as a wheeler-dealer, just like any good-for-nothing rogue leader monopolising power in the so-called Third World. Western pretensions to moral superiority have been handed a heavy blow once again.
The charges grow daily in complexity and the sums involved are rapidly mounting. Two investigations, one parliamentary and the other by international auditors Ernst & Young are currently under way, and a search for missing government files on privatisation deals is being conducted.
Germany's parliamentary commission launched a full-force inquiry, focusing on four deals during the Kohl years: First, the delivery of helicopters to the Canadian coast guard in the late 1980s; second, the sale in the early 1990s of aircraft to Canada and Thailand; third, the sale in 1991 of 36 tanks to the Saudi Arabian military; and fourth, the sale in 1992 of the Leuna oil refinery along with a chain of petrol stations in former East Germany to Elf-Aquitaine, then a state-owned French oil company. Prosecutors in Switzerland and France are investigating the bribes allegations. The secret deal between Kohl and former French President Francois Mitterrand underpins the Pan-European dimensions of the scandal, and reveals the scale and scope of the scandal.
Volker Neumann, chairman of the parliament investigation and from the ruling Social Democrat party, is unlikely to be sympathetic to Kohl and his hangers-on. Former CDU head in the central German state of Hesse, Manfred Kanther, confessed that unsourced funds worth some $4.2 million were illegally transferred from the Hesse CDU headquarters to Swiss bank accounts in the 1980s. Kohl, after much resistance, relented and said that he would turn over the names to a committee of top-level multi-party German political figures to help clear up allegations that anonymous donations were used to buy political favours.
The Ernst & Young examination, prompted by former CDU Treasurer Walter Leisler Kliepthe's confession that a suitcase stuffed with $600,000 in cash from arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber had been a "donation" to the CDU, revealed that the CDU's financial records cannot account for the origin of the $4.7 million received by the party between 1989 and 1993. The consequences have snowballed quickly: Schreiber is under investigation by lawyers in Augsburg. Kohl's successor as CDU head, Wolfgang SchŠuble, shamefacedly admitted to receiving cash donations from Schreiber. Both Kliep and SchŠuble could soon face criminal investigations.
Next came the so-called Flick Affair. Eberhard von Brauchitsch, head of Flick company, apparently donated many millions to the CDU. The names and numbers that lie at the heart of criminal investigations cannot be forgotten and will not be swept under the carpet when the dust has finally settled. Kohl, who was chancellor from 1982-98, denies that bribes and kickbacks took place. Lamely, he claims that his detractors are staging a smear campaign. Facing crippling fines, the CDU leadership is well aware that the party is in deep soup.
Understandably, Kohl's cronies are now distancing themselves from the former chancellor. One CDU accountant committed suicide, leaving behind a note mentioning his party's financial irregularities. Prospects for the party clearing up its tarnished image look grim; all semblance of respectability has been shattered. In the aftermath of such shattered illusions, the most basic trust in the fundamental integrity and smooth functioning of democratic and party-politics has been shaken.
