Germany's former chancellor Gerhard Schröder was yesterday at the centre of damaging allegations of sleaze over his decision to accept a lucrative job with Russia's biggest company. Opposition MPs joined forces to denounce Mr Schröder - who last week confirmed that he was to become chairman of state-controlled Russian giant Gazprom's North European Gas Pipeline company. Mr Schröder was accused of bringing German politics into disrepute and of "cronyism" and "corruption". Mr Schröder signed the controversial pipeline deal for a $6bn (£3.4bn) gas link between Germany and Russia under the Baltic Sea with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, just two weeks before leaving office. The former chancellor yesterday rejected the criticism and announced that he would take legal action over reports he would be paid between €200,000 (£134,000) and €1m a year. Those figures are "much too high", Mr Schröder told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "For me it is a thing of honour to help with the pipeline project," he was quoted as saying. "I supported the project politically in the past because I think it makes sense."
Opposition MPs joined forces to denounce Mr Schröder - who last week confirmed that he was to become chairman of state-controlled Russian giant Gazprom's North European Gas Pipeline company. Mr Schröder was accused of bringing German politics into disrepute and of "cronyism" and "corruption".
Mr Schröder signed the controversial pipeline deal for a $6bn (£3.4bn) gas link between Germany and Russia under the Baltic Sea with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, just two weeks before leaving office.
The former chancellor yesterday rejected the criticism and announced that he would take legal action over reports he would be paid between €200,000 (£134,000) and €1m a year. Those figures are "much too high", Mr Schröder told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
"For me it is a thing of honour to help with the pipeline project," he was quoted as saying. "I supported the project politically in the past because I think it makes sense."
...what one does for honour one does for free.
Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has caused an uproar by accepting a job with Russian-German consortium building a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. The deal was only signed in September -- two weeks before the elections that led to Schröder's retirement from politics -- giving the whole affair an aura of unsavory favoritism. Gerhard Schröder may no longer have the lead role on Germany's political stage, but it didn't take long for the ex-chancellor to once again ruffle feathers in Berlin. On Friday, Schröder confirmed he would head an advisory committee of a massive undersea Russian-German gas project, sparking a storm of protest about a potential conflict of interest. Schröder, along with his old chum Russian President Vladimir Putin, signed off on the €4-billion gas pipeline less than a fortnight before he lost Germany's general election in September. Now only weeks after leaving office he has agreed to take a plum job in a project headed by partially state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom. Not surprisingly, the move has eyebrows raised across Germany. Regardless of his true intentions, Schröder should know better. His decision to head the advisory board of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEGP) appears as if he is being rewarded for pushing through the politically sensitive project that will stretch from western Siberia to Germany's Baltic Sea coast. Although not yet official, Schröder will reportedly earn €1 million a year from the consortium that belongs 51 percent to Gazprom. The remaining 49 percent is controlled by German energy firm Eon and a subsidiary of BASF. The deal is set to help secure Germany's strategic energy needs from 2010, but it has annoyed both Poland and Ukraine since the pipeline's sea route will bypass both of those Kremlin-critical countries -- denying them transit fees and potentially exposing them to greater Russian pressure over energy supplies.
Gerhard Schröder may no longer have the lead role on Germany's political stage, but it didn't take long for the ex-chancellor to once again ruffle feathers in Berlin. On Friday, Schröder confirmed he would head an advisory committee of a massive undersea Russian-German gas project, sparking a storm of protest about a potential conflict of interest.
Schröder, along with his old chum Russian President Vladimir Putin, signed off on the €4-billion gas pipeline less than a fortnight before he lost Germany's general election in September. Now only weeks after leaving office he has agreed to take a plum job in a project headed by partially state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom. Not surprisingly, the move has eyebrows raised across Germany.
Regardless of his true intentions, Schröder should know better. His decision to head the advisory board of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEGP) appears as if he is being rewarded for pushing through the politically sensitive project that will stretch from western Siberia to Germany's Baltic Sea coast. Although not yet official, Schröder will reportedly earn €1 million a year from the consortium that belongs 51 percent to Gazprom. The remaining 49 percent is controlled by German energy firm Eon and a subsidiary of BASF.
The deal is set to help secure Germany's strategic energy needs from 2010, but it has annoyed both Poland and Ukraine since the pipeline's sea route will bypass both of those Kremlin-critical countries -- denying them transit fees and potentially exposing them to greater Russian pressure over energy supplies.
Nevertheless, Gerhard Schröder joins a long line of former German politicians who becom too greedy, too fast after leaving office: Graf Lambsdorff, or Helmut Kohl (who earned 300.000 Euro p.a. from Leo Kirch for who knows what).
He was a failure as a chancellor and now he manages even to be a failure as an ex-chancellor.
You single handidly and on totally peaceful terms achieved a mutually beneficial accord between what were once considered arch enemy nations in order to provide the EU Member States with a secure and sustainable flow of environmently friendly energy were our Anglo-Saxon partners to the far, far East (far beyond the right of Siberia and the Stalin gulags of Kamchatka) failed spectacularly although they even engaged in starting new wars of agression and in the criminal killing of thousands of their own soldiers and many more innocent citizens.
And what I like still more: Gerd, you did this and you are not even an Ivy League alumni, you were not trained by the American Free Enterprise Institute and you don't hold a Harvard MBA degree.
Gerd, you rock! Big time. "The USA appears destined by fate to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." Simon Bolivar, Caracas, 1819
