Decision in the afternoon?: Frankfurt-Hahn and the Russian oligarch

In the afternoon, a meeting of creditors will decide on the sale of the Frankfurt-Hahn regional airport to a Russian oligarch. The federal government still has to approve the sale.

Finding an owner for the Frankfurt-Hahn regional airport in the Hunsrück: Achieving this goal is proving difficult. This affects a workforce of around 450 people as well as service providers such as hoteliers or aircraft technicians who earn money in the vicinity of the airport. In the afternoon, four sister companies decide on the sale every ten minutes at a “special creditors’ meeting” in front of the insolvency court in Bad Kreuznach. But even after that, people in the Hunsrück are still threatened with anxious waiting, because even then no final decision will have been made.

The so-called Putin list

Because the potential buyer “NR Holding” is a company owned by the main owner of the Nürburgring race track, Viktor Charitonin. The 50-year-old billionaire from Russia is said to have the best contacts in the Kremlin, which underpins numerous government contracts for various drugs. Charitonin’s company is also said to be the largest manufacturer of the Russian Covid vaccine Sputnik V.

However, there are no EU sanctions against Charitonin in connection with the Ukraine war. However, the US Treasury Department has Charitonin on its so-called Putin list, which lists leading members of the Russian government and Russian oligarchs.

What makes the rooster attractive?

An airport in the middle of Germany, in Europe – in the hands of a Putin loyalist? The deal is said to be worth 20 million euros to the pharmaceutical mogul. The dpa news agency reports that the sum has already been deposited in a so-called notary escrow account.

Observers see two readings for the purchase. The more pleasant: Charitonin’s passion for classic cars and rejection of the public. Frankfurt-Hahn Airport is the closest to the Nürburgring race track and can be reached quickly by helicopter without having to fear the attention you get like in Frankfurt itself or Cologne/Bonn. The American entrepreneur Elon Musk has already used these advantages.

But Hahn’s biggest plus is that the airport holds an unrestricted operating license and thus also a night flight permit. This allows more flexibility – for Charitonin alone or for passenger and cargo air traffic.

What is the risk of the new buyer?

The more unpleasant reading can be found when looking at the history of the airport: Begun by the French and continued by the Americans, the airport was a military airport with its usual buildings due to its geographically and topographically favorable location until the 1990s. In addition, there is an all-weather landing system and a runway almost four kilometers long. This also makes visits to the Russian Antonov An-224 possible – a transport aircraft for goods, but also for armed forces.

What can break the sale?

This is where the Federal Ministry of Economics comes into play. According to the Foreign Trade and Payments Ordinance, it can examine investments from outside the EU in German companies and prohibit them if they endanger public security and order. Can check – but does not have to.

On tagesschau.deOn request, a spokesman for the ministry referred to the secrecy requirement for company and business secrets. And he points to the potential buyer. The chairman of the supervisory board, in turn, states that he has applied for a clearance certificate. It has been available to the ministry for more than three weeks. Remarkable: The ministry does not take action of its own accord, the spokesman explains, “only after indications from outside”.

The government press conference on Monday then gives the impression that the review of the Hahn sale is a hot potato that is being thrown from one ministry spokesman to the next: airports are not fundamentally critical infrastructure; the European CER directive, which proposes airports as critical infrastructure, will only be drafted into a federal law in the course of the year; the Federal Foreign Office has an opinion on the sale of an airport to a Russian investor, as it did recently in connection with the port of Hamburg and a Chinese investor, “but none that can be reported”; even if airports are located in the middle of Germany, the supervisory authority of the respective federal state is responsible for them, not the federal government.

The reactions of the two affected federal states are different: Rhineland-Palatinate simply withdraws from the fact that it is not involved in the tendering process. Hessen, however, which holds a 17.5 percent stake in Hahn, sees the possible sale on request tagesschau.de “Extremely critical,” as a spokesman said: “We ask the federal government, which is responsible for examining the process under the Foreign Trade and Payments Act, to explore all their options for preventing this sale.” A corresponding letter from the state finance minister to the federal government is “in preparation”. This would obviously give the indications that the Federal Ministry of Economics would have to initiate an investment review.

Even before that letter is finished, Economics Minister Robert Habeck explains during his trip to the USA: “We are currently screening it.” This is always done when there is concern that critical infrastructure could potentially be affected, he explains. The Greens politician says he can’t talk about it in detail yet. But: “It will take a few weeks now. There is no trend.”

Why has Frankfurt-Hahn flopped so far?

The history of the airport should make you prick up your ears. Instead of top real estate, the airport has so far appeared more like a slow seller: in 2007, the operators named a target of ten million passengers a year, they never got past four million – until the corona pandemic, passenger and freight volumes were mostly just a drop. So the debts went away. In 2013, the company’s own management certified that their company had a “non-sustainable business model”.

The state of Rhineland-Palatinate therefore tried for years to get rid of its majority stake. The EU prohibited plans to sell the infrastructure to the state-owned mobility company and then lease it back. An embarrassing bluff for the state government, but not the most embarrassing in connection with the rooster: in 2016, the then state interior minister entered into a deal with Chinese investors, who later turned out to be scammers.

A year later, the Chinese conglomerate HNA paid 15 million euros with suspected shareholders in the cadres of the Communist Party. However, two years ago, this beacon of hope also filed for bankruptcy, followed six months later by Hahn Airport itself. The next buyer – the Frankfurt Swift Conjoy – did not even pay the agreed purchase price. No one flies to the airport – except for a Russian oligarch who is not unfamiliar with cost-benefit analysis?

Is there an alternative?

If the Federal Ministry of Economics does not approve the deal after examining the Foreign Trade Ordinance, the Hahn insolvency administrator obviously has a second purchase contract up his sleeve. This is not unusual in such transactions: If the deal with bidder A falls through, you may have a less high purchase price, but you are already assured of a contract with bidder B.

A subsidiary of the Mainz real estate developer “WR Holding” would come into play here. It builds apartments and business premises. One of the best-known projects is the development of the “Rhein-Selz-Park”, a former US barracks. According to WR Holding, the money has already been transferred, so there is experience in dealing with a conversion project.

But there is still uncertainty for the people who make their living at and with Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. “What we’ve needed for a long time is a certain kind of security. If that exists, then there will be investments and jobs,” says hotelier Michael Willwerth. He’s one of many who all have to ask themselves: Ready to land in a safe buyer’s port – or take off to the next holding pattern?