The investigative committee dug through the big deals at the beginning of the corona pandemic, to which the Mask Inquiry Committee owes its name; Above all, the deals with commissions for ex-minister Alfred Sauter (formerly CSU, now non-affiliated) and for the Munich businesswoman Andrea Tandler. Even if the statements from cabinet members and Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) are still pending and are expected towards the end of the year, the committee has long since expanded its work.
According to the investigation order, business activities of MPs with the Free State should also be examined independently of the pandemic, since 2016. In the case of a dozen “questionable transactions”, announced Deputy Committee Chairman Florian Siekmann (Greens), one would “examine exactly where the mandate as business model was abused”.
On Monday, for example, two well-known CSU MPs were invited as witnesses: the long-time budget politician and lawyer Ernst Weidenbusch, who will retire from politics after the 2023 election. And the member of parliament and farmer Walter Nussel, who is also the state government’s representative for bureaucracy reduction, “Söder’s paragraph strings,” they like to call it. Both continue to work in their professions alongside their mandate. And both dealt with the core questions: Were the mandate and private interests intertwined? And how are the different “hats” separated in practice?
Did the official bureaucracy brakeman of the Free State advocate more regulations? That’s what Nussel’s questioning basically boiled down to. In 2021, he sent a position paper on trading in CO₂ certificates in forests to the State Chancellery – with the note that this could send a signal for “future-oriented” politics. The concept was drawn up by an entrepreneur from the region of Nussels, head of the Glen Silva company. But the paper fell through with a bang in the responsible Ministry of Agriculture – behind the initiative were “purely economic interests”, it said in the notes, the administrative effort was enormous. So: an increase in bureaucracy.
That’s not strange, Nussel suggested in his statement on Monday. When implementing the concept, yes, of course, additional “guard rails” would be needed. But it was just a “request” to “take a look”, nothing more. He was approached by the entrepreneur “somewhere, at a church fair”. Neither with his own company, Nuwa GmbH in Herzogenaurach, nor with his previous participation in another company called Silva Forst, did he have any business relationships with Glen Silva or plan to do so. It was an annoying oversight that he was listed in the signature of his letter to the State Chancellery not only as a member of parliament and commissioner, but also as an “entrepreneur”.
With his stake in Silva Forst, Nussel recently caused a bit of a stir. Nussel used to hold shares in the company for the purchase of forest areas in the Upper Palatinate, in which the mask broker Alfred Sauter was also involved. Just when the new Members of Parliament Act with stricter transparency obligations came into force in April 2022, he passed these on to his son. The stricter rules would have forced him to disclose the business from then on. This is not legally objectionable, but the SPD in the state parliament promptly sensed a “cover-up”. Nussel himself said that the handover to his son had been planned for a long time. In the committee, there was now a hail of critical inquiries from the SPD, Greens, FDP and AfD about his sideline activities, and there was always the suspicion that he was using his mandate and office as a “door opener”. Nussel rejected this.
In the case of Ernst Weidenbusch, whose previous legal fees in the service of the Bavarian Landesbank had triggered a debate in 2021, the committee was now dealing with two cases. Weidenbusch’s commitment to a craftsman from his constituency in Munich-Land, who was involved in the renovation of the Deutsches Museum and was not paid because a subcontractor was in trouble. As well as for an architect who demanded a higher fee for the protracted new construction of the State Archives in Landshut. Weidenbusch said that the craftsman had contacted him as a member of parliament; it was about its existence. There was never a lawyer mandate. He could not influence the fact that the craftsman had emailed his law firm and copied it to his representative’s office. Unfortunately, that happens again and again.
In the Landshut case, on the other hand, the architect was an “existing client” of the lawyer Weidenbusch. In the specific case – when Weidenbusch proposed an amicable settlement – there was no legal mandate and no remuneration. A solution to the dispute was necessary in the interests of the Free State. Over the years, it has “crystallized in such a way that these cases end up with me,” said Weidenbusch. “I can do it and then I’ll do it,” he said, not without self-praise and with a view to his departure from the state parliament: “I’m curious who will do it for us in the future.” In such cases, he is paid as a problem solver through the remuneration of MPs. It was very important for him to note that.