The affair surrounding Patrick Graichen is not yet politically over, when Udo Philipp, the next State Secretary from the Federal Ministry of Economics, is already under fire. Several opposition politicians accuse the top official from Robert Habeck’s house of not having clearly separated official and private interests.
The criticism was sparked by the fact that Philipp owns shares in several companies, including young ones, and at the same time is responsible for the start-up strategy of the federal government. In this way he could possibly exert political influence on companies that belong to him, according to the accusation. The State Secretary also owns stocks and shares in investment funds. Philipp moved from the Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of Finance to the Federal Ministry of Economics in December 2021. Until 2015 he managed the German branch of the Swedish financial investor EQT.
The Ministry of Economics rejected the allegations on Thursday and expressly protected Philipp. In the period before he switched to public service in 2019, he was involved with four companies as a so-called “business angel”, i.e. as an investor who provides start-ups with capital. However, he has not been active in the companies since 2019 and has no influence on their business policy, it said. Above all, however, he was “not concerned with these four companies in his work as State Secretary, especially not with decisions from which they would benefit financially”.
In order to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, care was taken to ensure that Philipp could not even theoretically make decisions that might benefit the four companies financially. “In concrete terms, this means that State Secretary Philipp’s office ensures that State Secretary Philipp will not submit any decisions that affect these companies,” the ministry said. One of the companies had been supported by the Ministry of Economics in the past, but Philipp was not involved in the decision.
According to the ministry, Philipp disclosed all his company holdings when he took office at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, although he did not even have to do so according to the compliance rules of the federal government. He also gave his privately held shares and fund units to an asset manager. It was said that he could no longer influence individual transactions.
The criticism of Philipp is sensitive for Habeck, since he only had to dismiss his state secretary Graichen this week. He had been involved in at least two internal ministry processes in which at least the appearance could have been created that relatives or close friends of the top official were possibly given preferential treatment. The CDU and CSU not only want to further dissect the Graichen case next Wednesday in the Bundestag’s economic committee, they also want to talk about possible conflicts of interest for Philipp.