All transactions between MPs and the Free State since 2010 are to be examined. In addition to the Nüßlein and Sauter cases, the Greens, SPD and FDP also want to clarify the role of entrepreneur Andrea Tandler.
It has been almost three decades since the name Tandler played a prominent role in a committee of inquiry in the state parliament. In 1994 parliament dealt with one of the biggest tax scandals in Bavaria, the Zwick case. The committee also examined the relationship between the former CSU grandee and finance minister Gerold Tandler and the spa king, Eduard Zwick. Tandler had borrowed money privately from Zwick, who had become rich as the operator of a thermal bath and whose debt was high in the millions. Now, after many other scandals that preoccupied the state parliament, another U-Committee is pending.
This time it’s about the mask affairs in the middle of the corona pandemic, and the name Tandler comes up again. The Munich entrepreneur Andrea Tandler, a daughter of Gerold Tandler, brokered corona protective masks to the health ministries in Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and the federal government in spring 2020 and, together with a partner, collected horrific commissions. It concerns claims in the amount of 34 to 51 million euros for the Little Penguin company. A large part of the money should also have flowed. The company named after the little penguin belongs to Andrea Tandler and a partner of hers.
The parliamentary groups of the Greens, the SPD and the FDP in the state parliament have decided to set up a U-Committee to investigate the suspicion between the CSU and the Free State. The CSU MPs Alfred Sauter (Landtag) and Georg Nüßlein (Bundestag) had made good money when selling Corona protective clothing to state buyers. This cost both mandate holders their political careers after the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office revealed the inglorious mask deals. The opposition parties are taking this as an opportunity to disclose all transactions between the MPs and the Free State as well as the dealerships over the past ten years. Maybe there was a lot more going on, which could be wrong.
The business of Alfred Sauter, the former Bavarian Minister of Justice, will be the subject of the new committee of inquiry.
(Photo: Rolf Poss / Imago)
Florian Siekmann, Deputy Head of the Landtag Greens, accuses Prime Minister Markus Söder and his government of “delaying tactics”. The government has bricked in parliamentary questions about the mask deals. SPD man Markus Rinderspacher, Vice President of the State Parliament, speaks of the suspicion of “favoritism”. The FDP MP Helmut Kaltenhauser says they would have liked to have avoided a U-Committee. But even the offer to appoint an independent investigator had been “rejected in an almost arrogant way” by the state government. So, from the point of view of all three groups, only the means that have been expressed remain, a committee of inquiry.