#PorscheGate
After the allegation of cliques with Lindner: Now Porsche boss Oliver Blume is rowing back – “I’m sorry”
Porsche boss Oliver Blume has to correct his own statements.
© Sebastian Gollnow/dpa
A new twist in the so-called Porschegate: now Porsche boss Oliver Blume himself suddenly no longer wants to have had close contact with Lindner. He simply “chosen the wrong words”.
Did finance minister Christian Linder conspire with Porsche boss Oliver Blume to let the car manufacturers make him a bailiff? The allegations that have boiled up in the past few days are tough. The ZDF satirical program “Die Anstalt” got the ball rolling on Tuesday with the publication of alleged statements by Blume at an internal company meeting. After that, as the saying goes, the hut did not only burn in the FDP camp. Netzwelt immediately acknowledged the allegations on Twitter with the hashtags #PorscheGate and #lindnerruecktritt. It quickly rained down denials. Now Blume rowed back too.
Blume’s statements that have been circulating in the past few days have been explosive. According to this, he is said to have spoken to his employees at the end of June that the company played “a very large part in it [habe]that e-fuels have been included in the coalition agreement. We were a main driver there, with very close contact with the coalition parties.” Lindner kept him up to date on the coalition negotiations “almost every hour”. Sentences that suggest a close relationship between politics and business that smell of influence.
Porschegate: Denials from all sides
The FDP reacted quickly and rejected the allegations of close cooperation between Lindner and Blume. “In October 2021 there was only a short phone call between Mr. Blume and Mr. Lindner on questions about the use of e-fuels,” said the spokesman for the FDP on Saturday. The other negotiators of the coalition partners had also held such talks, which is also correct in view of the importance of the German automotive industry.
In any case, ZDF had announced that it had evidence for Blume’s statements. Which raised the question of whether the Porsche boss might have exaggerated his contacts in politics and made his influence on the employees greater than he actually is. Even a Porsche spokesman said on Friday when asked by the German Press Agency that the exchange in question “didn’t happen that way”.
Porsche boss Blume: “I chose the wrong words”
The company even followed up on Saturday. “During an internal event in June, exaggerated formulations were made, and we apologize for that,” said a spokesman. “The choice of words does not correspond to the facts. The exchange did not take place and there was no influence.” The spokesman did not provide any information on Blume’s exact choice of words. After days of turmoil, Blume finally spoke up in the “Bild am Sonntag”. He said he had “chosen the wrong words” at an internal event. This created a “wrong impression”. “I’m sorry for that.”
At the end of June, there was a dispute within the traffic light coalition about a ban on new registrations of combustion cars from 2035 at EU level. Lindner had rejected the ban plans. Before this decision, the FDP announced, there had been “no contact whatsoever with Mr. Blume”.
Is that the end of the matter? The left in the Bundestag warned of a threat to democracy in view of the reports. “It cannot be that the Porsche boss was apparently better informed about the status of the coalition negotiations than the rest of the population. That would further undermine democracy,” said parliamentary group manager Jan Korte of the “Welt am Sonntag”. “The thing has at least one ‘taste’.” And a spokeswoman for the transparency organization Lobby Control, Christina Deckwirth, told the newspaper: “It is highly problematic if there are special accesses for large, financially strong corporations during coalition negotiations.”