Subject: "Soft Money" -- German style (Guru)..
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 044106 -0600 (CST)
From: "Roy L. Beavers"
To: emfguru
--------------------------------------------------
Hi everybody:
U.S. TV stations had some (too obvious) pleasure in playing over,
again, the Nixon tapes this past weekend. The tapes revealed the seamy
conversations of the former president, in his White House office,
saying "A million dollars -- that's easy. We can raise that...." The
money was needed to pay-off the Watergate burglars and keep them quiet....
......The role of $money$ (Deutsch-marks this time) in the corruption
of democratic processes evidently is not confined to Washington -- it
extends to Berlin (and Paris?).....
I wonder if the western democracies have enjoyed too much $prosperity$
for too long.....
They have forgotten how fragile "democracy" is..... Eternal vigilance --
that is the price of freedom..... We (you ... America) can lose it if you
(we) are unwilling to throw out politicians who engage in this kind of
political corruption.....
Is that not what McCain and Bradley are trying to tell us???
Cheerio.... (See below)
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
roy@emfguru.com
.....It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.....
NEW!!! Website... http://emfguru.com
...................People are more important than profits.................
_________________________________________________________________
05:40 PM ET 01/23/00
Kohl Scandal Reaches France
By BURT HERMAN=
Associated Press Writer=
BERLIN (AP) _ The web of secret money transfers trapping
Germany's conservatives in a financing scandal widened Sunday with
allegations that the French government of Francois Mitterrand
funneled millions of dollars to support former Chancellor Helmut
Kohl's 1994 re-election.
The scandal _ which has involved money trading hands in
suitcases, arms deals stretching from Canada to Saudi Arabia, and
the suicide of a party accountant _ took a further bizarre twist
Sunday after a fake statement was faxed to news media saying Kohl
was ready to name anonymous donors to the Christian Democratic
party.
Kohl told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the
fax was a forgery and reiterated that he would not identify the
donors from whom he has admitted soliciting $1 million that was
kept off party books.
``I don't have the intention to make such a statement,'' Kohl
was quoted as saying.
His refusal to name names has become the key issue in the
scandal. Parliament has launched an inquiry to examine whether
bribes or kickbacks influenced government decisions under Kohl, who
was chancellor from 1982-98, and he also is the subject of a
criminal investigation.
Kohl stepped down as honorary chairman of the Christian
Democratic party last week under pressure from party leaders who
demanded he identify the donors. Some party officials have even
hinted of possible legal action against Kohl to compel him to
reveal the donors.
Angela Merkel, party secretary-general, was meeting with senior
party leaders Sunday evening to review an audit of the party's
finances. She told reporters that accountants were unable to
clarify where $5.7 million in party money had come from, although
$1 million were believed to be from Kohl's anonymous donors.
The audit was to be made public Monday, but Merkel said it
revealed nothing new about the part of the scandal disclosed over
the weekend involving Mitterand, who died in 1996, and the French
oil company Elf-Aquitaine.
ARD television reported Saturday that Mitterrand arranged
payment of $15.7 million to the Christian Democrats and that the
money was transferred as part of alleged bribes totaling $44
million paid by Elf-Aquitaine for its 1992 purchase of the former
East German Leuna refinery.
The alleged bribes have long been the subject of investigation
by Swiss and French prosecutors.
Officials in the German chancellor's office also have been
searching for missing government files on the privatization deal
sought by parliament as part of its inquiry into the scandal. This
week, the government said it would appoint a special investigator
to track down what happened to the files.
ARD said there was no evidence Kohl was aware of the $15.7
million transfer, and Michael Roik, Kohl's spokesman, called the
allegation a character assassination of the former chancellor.
In a joint report with French Television 2, ARD cited sources
close to Mitterrand as saying the money was not bribes but was
intended to serve ``state interests for Europe.''
The report said the French and German secret services met
regularly with middlemen in a Geneva hotel to make the payments.
Meanwhile Sunday, the leader of Germany's Jewish community said
he had received an apology from Christian Democrat leaders for a
false comment by Prince Casimir Sayn-Wittgenstein, a former state
party treasurer in Hesse, that some of the money in the scandal
came from Jewish estates.
``It came late, but not too late,'' Paul Spiegel, president of
the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Hessischen Rundfunk
radio.
_________________________________________________________________
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com