Vladimir Putin and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at the International Energy Week Forum in Moscow, October 2, 2019. SATELLITE / ALEXEY NIKOLSKY / REUTERS
Gerhard Schröder is the naked king. The former Social Democratic chancellor in power between 1998 and 2005, known for his role as a major lobbyist for Russian state-owned companies in Germany, is as isolated as ever. The former leader, close to Vladimir Putin, still refuses to end his term as head of the supervisory board of the Rosneft gas group and, within Nord Stream, a subsidiary of Gazprom, a company that manages the Baltic gas pipelines. he was on fire. defender.
This stubbornness of the old chancellor, despite all the pressure he has been subjected to, especially for a week by the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), is turning out to be tragic. All his relatives have turned their backs on him. On Tuesday, March 1, four employees of his office resigned in one go. In his previous term as Chancellor, Mr Schroeder has, in addition to his pension of € 7,000 a month, an envelope of € 407,000 a year, paid by the taxpayer, for an office in the Bundestag and the salary of his assistants. According to the German press, he will also receive 600,000 euros a year for his term at Rosneft and 250,000 euros from Nord Stream.
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The most spectacular desertions were those of the faithful: Albrecht Funk, his office manager, who wrote his speeches for twenty years, and Bella Anda, a former government spokesman between 2002 and 2005, who created a popular podcast with him and fed his LinkedIn account also announced the end of all these collaborations. Mr Schroeder wrote in the network last week that “Russia’s security interests do not justify the use of military means”, but did not name Vladimir Putin or announce his withdrawal from gas companies close to him.
Since then, the issue has taken a cumbersome institutional turn. Assistants to former chancellors are appointed by the office and funded by it. Many voices are rising against the renewal of staff, as long as Mr Schroeder has not resigned. “My advice to Gerhard Schroeder is to step down from these functions,” Olaf Scholz told ZDF on Thursday night, March 3. Hours earlier, the influential German taxpayers’ association, which condemned poor public spending management, demanded the withdrawal of the former chancellor’s donation. Other organizations are breaking with him. Gerhard Schroeder may lose, among other things, his title of honorary member of the Borussia Dortmund football club, as well as that of honorary citizen of Hanover. He risks being expelled from the PSD. The industrialist Herenknecht and the Swiss media group Ringier also terminated their cooperation with him.
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