Tom Rohrböck: FDP Hessen is investigating contacts with AfD advisors

According to research by NDR, WDR and ZEIT, a political advisor to the AfD has also established a close network of contacts with FDP officials. In Hesse, the FDP Presidium met for a crisis meeting and worked on the interdependencies.

By Sebastian Pittelkow and Katja Riedel (NDR / WDR)

A letter of the highest urgency recently reached several functionaries of the Hessian FDP. It was overwritten with the subject “On our own behalf”. It referred to a questionnaire from NDR, WDR and “time”, which the Hessen-FDP immediately and completely unusually put on its website before reporting.

The letter was about business and personal ties between several Hessian FDP functionaries and the dubious AfD puller Tom Rohrböck. In it, the Hessian FDP now called on the officials mentioned to distance themselves from Rohrböck, his environment and ideas – in writing.

One wants to emphasize that the FDP has a clear stance “on the AfD and the machinations” of this “advisor” – probably also because all contact between AfD and FDP since the election of Thomas Kemmerich as Thuringian Prime Minister for the party in the AfD made possible Campaign year could be harmful.

Encounter at an inn near Salzburg

The letter to the party colleagues was signed by the Hessian state chairwoman and parliamentary manager of the FDP parliamentary group, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, after a hastily convened special meeting of the Hessian FDP party presidium.

Stark-Watzinger himself has also met Tom Rohrböck personally. At the end of January 2020 she traveled to Austria. In an inn near Salzburg she met liberal party colleagues and German entrepreneurs. But there were also politicians from the right-wing populist FPÖ and the AfD. Rohrböck organized the evening. This is shown by WhatsApp messages that NDR, WDR and “time” are available.

Success with the AfD

For the political advisor Rohrböck, this evening is one of many meetings at which he has brought together right-wing, conservative or liberal politicians in recent years. Again and again he tried to influence such parties.

He succeeded in doing this above all with the AfD. Research by NDR, WDR and “Zeit” recently revealed the AfD’s consultant affair. According to this, Rohrböck invited top functionaries of the party to luxury hotels and repeatedly offered them political support and money.

He was even in contact with the AfD’s front woman, Alice Weidel, for more than two years. The AfD board set up a commission of inquiry into the Rohrböck case. Mandate holders must declare their Rohrböck relationship in writing within four weeks.

“Exchange on economic issues”

Bettina Stark-Watzinger herself emphasizes that she did not know at the event near Salzburg that she would also meet right-wing populists there. She spoke to the AfD member of the Bundestag, Birgit Mahlsack-Winkemann. A photo also shows her with Markus Plenk, who was the Bavarian parliamentary group leader of the AfD until 2019 and then left the party.

“This presence was a reason for me to leave the event quickly after my lecture,” says Stark-Watzinger. You thought that it should be about an “exchange on economic issues” about Fintech and Bitcoins. She only had contact with Rohrböck at the event, participation and travel were organized by her constituency office.

Office worker in the Rohrböck area

Until recently, Martina S., a local politician of the FDP who heads a local association, worked in the constituency office. S. has evidently been moving in Rohrböck’s orbit for a long time. In March she was interviewed by the online portal “Hessen Depesche”, which controls Rohrböck.

Portals like this one are the heart of a complex company network with which the consultant established and maintained contacts in liberal and right-wing politics. Already in 2017 your info and the industry magazine “journalist” reported on contacts between FDP politicians and online portals in the Rohrböck area.

Martina S. is also said to have worked for a website that is knitted according to the same pattern as several Internet portals from the Rohrböck corporate universe. Articles on similar topics, which were also found on other Rohrböck portals, repeatedly appeared on the site. After Stark-Watzinger found out about these points of contact, she “quit” S. “immediately”. Martina S. left a request unanswered.

Acquaintance from childhood

Rohrböck is the alleged puller of a company network that extends to Great Britain, Liechtenstein and Austria. Some politicians even became directors of small publishers or investment firms. In this context, names of politicians from the FDP appear in commercial registers and company brochures. The current head of the Hessian FDP parliamentary group, René Rock, was advertised as an advisory board member of a holding company. Rock denies: He did not belong to the advisory board.

Rock and Rohrböck have known each other from Seligenstadt in Hesse since childhood. They used to have business ties too. Together they built up the local paper “Forum-Magazin” in the 1990s. Rock announces that he has sold advertisements in the “Forum-Magazin”, written articles and laid out the magazine. Rock later acquired shares in an investment firm Rohrböcks, became the board member and managing director of another firm. He did not get a contract and never had an insight into the economic situation and therefore insisted on his removal.

Cooperation with Hessian AfD politicians

The contact has been reduced in the past few years due to the “business conduct of Mr. Rohrböck”, says Rock. There is no longer any cooperation today. In a text message to an Austrian politician in 2018, Rohrböck wrote of an order from the FDP Hessen to establish contacts with Austrian liberals. And he added: “Well, from our side, access to Rock and Lindner has been paved.” This refers to René Rock and apparently FDP boss Christian Lindner. Lindner denies contact and cooperation with the political advisor. The FDP Hessen also says that it never gave Rohrböck an order.

There is evidence that Rohrböck worked with Hessian FDP politicians until recently. For example with Katja Adler. This year she would like to move into the Bundestag with a promising place on the list. In 2019, Adler met with Rohrböck and a politician from the Austrian NEOS in Salzburg. Until June 2021 she wrote a column for another postil from the Rohrböck cosmos. “Tom” still knows her “from the last millennium,” says Adler. When he asked her if she would like to write political comments, she agreed. She never claims to have received a fee for her articles.

Rohrböck himself left all inquiries unanswered.