Former German president faces political favors trial
BERLIN: Germany's former president Christian Wulff faces trial tomorrow accused of accepting financial favors in office, the legal aftermath of a wider sleaze scandal that saw him resign in disgrace last year. The charge against Wulff centers on a 719-euro ($963) sum, and opinion is split on whether Germany's youngest-ever head of state really needed to quit or fell victim to media hounding and an overzealous criminal justice apparatus.
Since Wulff's downfall, prosecutors have built a case with 46 witnesses, alleging part of a hotel room bill, babysitting costs and a restaurant meal were paid by a film producer friend whom he later helped promote a movie project. Wulff, 54, is Germany's first former head of state to answer charges in court. He denies wrongdoing. If found guilty he faces up to three years' jail or a fine for having accepted the favors five years ago when he was state premier of Lower Saxony.
"I think at the Elysee Palace or in Italy, politicians would not have resigned over similar accusations," said political scientist Lothar Probst of Bremen University, who pointed to a political culture in Germany that punishes holders of public office for even minor offences. Viewed in hindsight, said Probst, "political interests and the media apparently worked together to bring down a politician who, seen from a purely legal point of view, did hardly anything wrong."
But Probst also said that at the height of the scandal in early 2012 Wulff faced multiple allegations of corruption involving several other business friends and did himself no favors by failing to clear them up quickly. News website Stern.de said that "more important than conviction or acquittal is something else: That it is clear that possible corruption is prosecuted not just in the case of a minor official but also in the case of a former president."
DETERMINATION
Wulff, who has since the scandal separated from his wife and largely retreated from public life, rejected an offer from state prosecutors in April to settle the case with a 20,000-euro fine, saying he is determined to clear his name. The accusations against him and the film producer David Groenewold, who also faces trial, were reduced from the more serious corruption and bribery charges initially demanded by prosecutors that carry up to five years' jail. Groenewold allegedly paid the cash when the two men and their partners visited Munich to attend a movie festival and the world-famous Oktoberfest in 2008.
Months later Wulff allegedly wrote to industrial giant Siemens to ask for backing for a movie project of his friend Groenewold. Amid the wider scandal which broke in late 2011, Wulff was battered by almost daily claims that he had also accepted other favors from business friends, including holidays and a cheap home loan, when he was state premier. Wulff worsened matters when he left an angry voicemail message for the editor of Germany's biggest selling newspaper Bild over its coverage of the scandal.
The conservative Christian Democrat stepped down in disgrace in February 2012 after prosecutors demanded his immunity be lifted, kicking off a state investigation in which police searched Wulff's home. His public humiliation intensified when the former first lady Bettina Wulff revealed their marital problems in an autobiography. The couple separated within a year of his resignation. Wulff, who had been Chancellor Angela Merkel's hand-picked choice for the post, was replaced by Joachim Gauck, who was a Christian pastor and civil rights activist in the former communist East Germany._ AFP
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