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Politics
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Steinbrück pressured over law firm payments

Published: 29 Dec 12 09:00 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20121229-47033.html

Peer Steinbrück, the Social Democratic Party's candidate for the chancellorship, is under pressure over official payments made to a law firm while he was finance minister. He later gave a speech to the firm for a fee of €15,000.

Steinbrück was Angela Merkel's finance minister from 2005 to 2009, when he helped to engineer Germany's bank bailout during the global financial crisis.

During his tenure, the finance ministry paid exactly €1,831,397.38 in consultancy fees to the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, who helped Steinbrück put together the bank bailout law, the Bild newspaper reported.

In October, the same paper revealed that Steinbrück had given a speech to the firm in 2011, when he received a fee of €15,000.

Earlier this year, the politically conservative Springer publishing house, which owns Bild, had sued the ministry to reveal the precise figures paid to the law firm. The ministry had initially refused to reveal the exact payments on the grounds that they formed part of the firm's business secrets.

The revelations could spark a debate on the extent to which ministries should use private companies to help draw up legislation.

Steinbrück came under pressure earlier this year after it was revealed that he had earned €1.25 million on the lecture circuit since leaving the cabinet, on top of his duties as an MP.

The Local/bk

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

10:47 December 29, 2012 by Englishted
Why on earth the S.P.D. picked on this turncoat to run is something I just don't understand .

As if he will have any grasp of what the workers and "normal "people living in Germany are going through and hoping for in the near future.

Champagne socialists who wants or needs them ,the U.K. had them for years as new labour and the gap between rich and poor increased .

We need a party leader who unites the whole country and will bring a little more equality into the equation.This is not the man.
12:03 December 29, 2012 by McM
This will go down well with the world owes me a free lunch club at the SPD the Green against everything parisites.
12:30 December 29, 2012 by realist1961
Makes you wonder what sort of skeletons Steinmeier and Gabriel have in their closet if Steinbrück was the better choice of the three.
18:22 December 29, 2012 by Berlin fuer alles
Nice gravy train. Totally out of sync with the economic austerity being imposed on 99% of Germans and the rest of the Eurozone for that matter.
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