Transport Minister Quits After Payoff Conviction

German Transportation Minister Reinhard Klimmt resigned Thursday, saying he didn’t want the ruling Social Democrats tainted by the same kind of corruption scandal that has discredited former Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

In a case stemming from Klimmt’s days in the leadership of the small state of Saarland, a district court in the city of Trier had slapped him with a fine of almost $12,000 Monday. Klimmt had been found guilty of financial malfeasance for accepting $275,000 from a Roman Catholic charity for the soccer club he headed at the same time he was his party’s leader in the state parliament.

The court judged that the 1997 donation to the FC Saarbruecken soccer club came with strings attached, because the Caritas agency that gave Klimmt the money was probably seeking to shield its hospitals and other state-supported services from budget cuts.

Klimmt’s alleged wrongdoing resembles the donations scandal plaguing Kohl and the opposition Christian Democratic Union, although the suspect payment this time was for a sports club rather than a political party.

But the 58-year-old minister’s departure--at the insistence of his fellow Social Democrats--did not damage the governing party so much as it cast Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as evenhanded for holding his own colleagues to the same standards as his opponents.

Kohl was forced to resign as honorary CDU chairman in January after a government-led investigation accused him of criminal behavior in accepting and hiding more than $1 million in illegal donations.

“We came to power claiming higher moral standards than the others, so we had to accept the consequences,” the Social Democrat heading the Kohl investigation, Volker Neumann, said of his party’s push for Klimmt’s resignation.

Klimmt told journalists that he decided to leave the office he has held for only a year “to make it easier on everyone.”

Cutting the political ropes to Klimmt may also strengthen Schroeder’s efforts to steer his once-leftist party more toward the center, because Klimmt was an ally of former Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine.

Lafontaine resigned in March 1999 in protest of Schroeder’s moves away from the party’s traditional labor union political base and a tax-and-spend policy that stifled growth and investment.

Since Lafontaine’s departure, the government has pushed through impressive tax reforms that have helped reduce unemployment from 12% to 9% and stimulate the first economic growth in a decade.

Together with the finance scandal still plaguing the CDU, the economic improvements have elevated Schroeder to surprising popularity midway through his government’s four-year term.

Klimmt’s resignation now removes one of the few remaining traditionalists from the governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.

Schroeder named a deputy transportation minister, 45-year-old Kurt Bodewig, as Klimmt’s successor.