[ad_1]
The CDU member of the Bundestag, Nikolas Löbel, is retiring from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag. According to information from SPIEGEL, he communicated this decision to the executive parliamentary group of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group in a personal conversation. The “Stuttgarter Zeitung” reported on it first.
During the pandemic, Löbel negotiated protective crown masks through his company and charged a commission of 250,000 euros for them. According to Spiegel’s information, now his regional association in the parliamentary group has also asked the politician to resign his candidacy in the Mannheim constituency. Löbel had only prevailed against one candidate in the district association in February. Now your regional association wants a clear cut.
In addition to the commission you have accepted, it is very heavy that you announced orders for masks with an email from your Bundestag account. This is a violation of Bundestag rules, a senior politician from the Baden-Württemberg CDU told SPIEGEL.
Löbel should also withdraw his candidacy in the federal elections.
In the hours after the SPIEGEL report on the questionable mask business was released, the wires in the Union faction were hot. Ralph Brinkhaus, leader of the parliamentary group and director of the regional association of Baden-Württemberg in the parliamentary group, Andreas Jung, spoke with Löbel several times. He faced the fact that his behavior in the group could not be tolerated.
He was unequivocally asked to resign from the Foreign Affairs Committee. But he should also withdraw his candidacy for the federal elections in September, for which he has been in Mannheim since February. This was suggested to him by the party leadership. He has to take this step himself, as he has been chosen by the district association.
Secretary General Paul Ziemiak gave the route on Twitter. There, the CDU man wrote that it seemed to him “deeply indecent that parliamentarians had enriched themselves by acquiring masks in the worst crisis since World War II.” The citizens of the country “did not understand” this.
In the evening, a letter from Brinkhaus and the leader of the CSU regional group, Alexander Dobrindt, followed with an urgent warning to the Union deputies. It establishes that the activities within the scope of the mandate must not be “linked to personal economic interests”. The receipt of cash benefits “for the mediation of medical protective teams in the context of the pandemic fight against parliamentarians meets our complete misunderstanding and is strongly condemned by us,” wrote Brinkhaus and Dobrindt.
The relevant charges against the deputies must “be presented and clarified in a completely transparent manner,” the two union politicians continued: “Such behavior does not meet our standards, damages the reputation of politics as a whole and is unacceptable.
After the mask business became known, Löbel initially confirmed in an internal party statement that through his Projektmanagement-GmbH he had negotiated several contracts for the purchase of protective masks between a supplier from Baden-Württemberg and two private companies from Heidelberg. and Mannheim. For this, the GmbH received “a remuneration based on the market standard” of around a quarter of a million euros. Your company is known to the Bundestag administration.
In a similar case, CSU politician Georg Nüßlein announced in the afternoon that he would resign from his inactive position as deputy leader of the parliamentary group. His lawyer said that he would not run again for the Bundestag elections. Last week, the Bundestag lifted Nüßlein’s immunity. The 51-year-old man is being investigated, among other things, due to the initial suspicion of bribery and bribery of elected officials in connection with the purchase of corona respirators.
