3 Convicted in German Political Donations Scandal

A West German court, capping a corruption scandal that tainted the country’s major political parties, on Monday convicted two former Cabinet ministers and a businessman of evading taxes on campaign donations.

But the Bonn state court, after a highly publicized 18-month trial, acquitted the defendants of the principal charges of bribery and influence-peddling.

Hans Friderichs and Count Otto Lambsdorff, both of the small Free Democratic Party, who served successive terms as economics minister, were fined the equivalent of $100,000 and $34,167, respectively. Eberhard von Brauchitsch, former manager of the Flick industrial conglomerate, received a suspended two-year prison term and a $305,000 fine.

The court cleared Von Brauchitsch of charges that he bribed Friderichs and Lambsdorff to obtain a tax exemption for his firm during the term of former Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt a decade ago. The Free Democrats were junior partners in a coalition headed by Schmidt. Lambsdorff and Friderichs, accused of accepting bribes in office, were both cleared of influence-peddling charges.

‘Much Concealed by Witnesses’

“The court is certain that much was concealed by the witnesses here,” said Judge Hans-Henning Bucholz. But he said the trial produced enough evidence “that meting out punishment is possible.”

Bucholz said the bribery charges could not be sustained because a criminal conspiracy could not be proved, but he added the court concluded that the two former Cabinet ministers received money.

“The not inconsiderable suspicion remains for this chamber that you received the cash payments described in the indictments,” he told Lambsdorff and Friderichs.

In the months before the trial, the government and West Germany’s three major political parties were jolted by a series of damaging revelations about secret multimillion dollar gifts from top firms to leading politicians, including the current chancellor, Helmut Kohl, leader of the Christian Democratic Union.

The money was alleged to have been channeled to the party illegally through nonprofit organizations whose status exempted them from taxes.

Payoff for Tax Waiver

The corruption charges arose from allegations that Von Brauchitsch paid Lambsdorff and Friderichs $285,000 for the Free Democrats in return for an Economics Ministry-approved tax waiver for Flick. Von Brauchitsch resigned as Flick general manager in 1982.

The $250-million waiver, on the sale of Flick shares in auto maker Daimler-Benz in 1976 and 1979, has since been rescinded.

The Flick company was West Germany’s biggest family-run private industrial holding company, with interests ranging from steel, tanks and explosives to cars, chemicals and insurance.

It was sold for an estimated $2.7 billion at the start of 1986 to Deutsche Bank, which sold the core industrial group to private investors.

Toward the end of the trial, prosecutors abandoned their efforts to prove the bribery charges and concentrated instead on proving the three were guilty of evading taxes on political contributions made by Flick to the Free Democratic Party.