As of: 02/13/2023 6:09 p.m
Ex-domestic secret service chief Maassen has set up a foundation in the Swiss tax haven of Zug. He wants to work against “totalitarianism and contemporary socialism”.
The former president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hans-Georg Maassen, has a sideline that has never been publicly known: the controversial politician and new head of the right-wing conservative “WerteUnion” is the founder and president of a foundation in Switzerland, in the idyllic tax haven of Zug. The foundation has the legendary name: “Atlantis”, like the lost mythical island kingdom.
WDR, NDR, “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (SZ) and the Swiss Tamedia Foundation documents are available. The foundation and the traces that emanate from it raise many questions. The most important: What are two wealthy entrepreneurs planning to do with the former head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in a Swiss foundation?
Founded in 2021
According to the documents, Maassen and one of his two German co-CEOs appeared at a notary in Zug in early July 2021. Maassen and a wealthy German financial manager from an industrial dynasty in Westphalia, living in Switzerland, presented proof of the legally required endowment capital.
50,000 Swiss francs had been paid into an account with Credit Suisse shortly before, it is said. Hans-Georg Maassen himself is named as the founder and is also the president.
According to the purpose of the foundation, an important task of the Atlantis Foundation should be to collect further money, for example through endowments. Money that the foundation board, in particular its president Maassen, can dispose of. “The interpretation of the … laid down will of the founder is the responsibility of the foundation board,” says the foundation deed.
“Committed to the idea of freedom”
The purpose of the foundation is about social and political issues. The foundation, which is apparently designed as a kind of think tank, should not only work in Switzerland. The general public should be promoted “selflessly in material, intellectual or moral areas”. “Atlantis” should make the mediation of a democratic culture and measures “against extremism and totalitarianism” a concern.
He founded the foundation at an amazing moment: in the summer of 2021, he ran as a direct candidate for the CDU in southern Thuringia for the federal elections and received no financial support from the party.
So far, the foundation is still under construction, Maassen explained on request. He leaves unanswered who finances the foundation and how high its financial resources are. The foundation has not yet published anything. Hans-Georg Maassen assures that the foundation did not support him in the election campaign. She also has nothing to do with the union of values, does not support any parties, he himself works on a voluntary basis.
Allegations to the media, universities and most parties
Maaßen also explains that with the foundation he has “realized a long-cherished project of founding a “civil foundation that is committed to the idea of freedom”. He founded it in Switzerland because of the simpler foundation law. Maassen added a flyer to his answer Foundation, which states that Atlantis supports “political initiatives” and opposes “totalitarianism and contemporary socialism”.
What he means by that is also clear: “Extremists are again openly demanding that their ideology take precedence over free democracy. The media, universities, social groups and most parties now also represent similar positions,” the flyer says.
Office address but no website
There is not even a website for the foundation on the internet. But there is an address and there is also a door sign, located in a multi-storey white office building in Zug. The Atlantis Foundation is located in a business center with currently more than 40 companies.
Learned from business center staff WDR, NDR, SZ and Tamedia that it is said that these are by no means pure letterbox addresses, although no employees of a company were to be found during a visit on a weekday. When asked, it was said that someone from the Atlantis Foundation came by regularly. The employees there did not want to say who this was and who was paying for the center.
Striking: Two of Maassen’s foundation board members have company addresses in the business center themselves. One of them is an elderly finance executive. He comes from a steel construction dynasty and claims to have moved from Berlin to Lucerne in 2010. The majority of his companies and holdings are on the same floor as “Atlantis”, and he apparently also has an office there.
The first board of directors leaves
The third board member, a man from the pharmaceutical industry, belongs to his business environment. On request he said WDR, NDR, SZ and Tamedia that he had made his name available at short notice at the request of his business partner as a kind of friendship, but that he himself was completely “apolitical”. Maassen is not personally known to him. He has nothing to do with the foundation itself, he has not given any money and has since asked to be dismissed from the foundation’s board of directors.