Status: 01/27/2023 11:26 am
The Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office sees no initial suspicion of criminal behavior on the part of Finance Minister Lindner. The reason for the examination was a written greeting for a bank where Lindner had taken out a private loan.
The Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office sees “no initial suspicion of criminal behavior” by FDP leader Christian Lindner in connection with a real estate loan. The department for combating corruption has thus closed an examination process, the authority said. The reason for the examination was that Lindner had written a greeting for the Karlsruhe BBBank in the spring, from which he had also taken out a loan for a private house purchase.
Authorities: Initial suspicion “in any case remote”
The “Spiegel” first reported on the greeting and the credit. On the basis of this report, the Berlin prosecutor initiated a preliminary investigation. The public prosecutor’s office would only have been entitled to investigate if there were sufficient indications of criminal conduct. The authority has now explained that the examination did not result in an initial suspicion of bribery of MPs or acceptance of an advantage – “which is remote anyway”.
No indications were found that the granting of the loan “would have been linked to the expectation of influencing future and/or rewarding past service activities”. This is confirmed with an “examination of the credit exposure by the auditing association responsible for BBBank, which has become known here and which has not raised any objections,” according to the authority.
Lindner had already rejected a connection between his real estate financing and the greeting after the test became known. He had his lawyer explain that there was no basis whatsoever for the fact that “things had been kept secret”.