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Disgraced Kohl faces hearing in financing probe

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June 30, 2000   

        

BERLIN (AP) - After months of buildup, disgraced former Chancellor Helmut Kohl finally takes the stand in hearings examining whether cash donations influenced decisions during his 16 years in power.

      

Kohl's long-awaited testimony before a parliamentary investigating committee Thursday gives him a chance to counter allegations about murky dealings under his administration that have dirtied his reputation as the chancellor who united Germany in 1990.

 

The party financing scandal that erupted last fall with Kohl's admission that he accepted illegal donations as chancellor has developed into an enduring political drama that dogs the conservative Christian Democratic party once led by Kohl.

 

But comments from his attorney and leading Christian Democrats made it clear that Kohl, 70, will remain silent on the nub of the inquiry - who gave him some 2 million marks (dlrs 1 million) in undeclared campaign funds in the 1990s. Even his own party has pressed Kohl to reveal the names.

 

Kohl insists the donors were citizens who wanted to support the party's work in former communist East Germany in the early 1990s. He said he promised them anonymity and refuses to break his word.

      

Also under investigation by the parliamentary panel are several business deals under the Kohl government in which kickbacks allegedly flowed, including a tank sale to Saudi Arabia and the

privatization of a major oil refinery in eastern Germany that was sold to French concern Elf Aquitaine.

 

Facing a panel dominated by the governing center-left parties, Kohl was expected to cite a pending criminal investigation against him in refusing to answer questions during the daylong hearing.

      

Earlier testimony by former Kohl aides shed little light on the scandal or the role of a businessman at its center, Karlheinz Schreiber.

 

Schreiber, currently fighting extradition from Canada on German tax evasion charges, allegedly  handed over 1 million marks (dlrs 500,000) in cash to Kohl aides at a Swiss shopping mall in 1991. He also reportedly was involved in the tank sale.

 

But Schreiber shielded Kohl in an interview with the news channel n-tv this week, rejecting rumors that he lobbied the Kohl government with cash to support arms deals and other business projects. Schreiber said he met Kohl a few times but "at no time" talked about business.

 

Kohl, whose anglegal basis," Hirsch, a former vice president of parliament, said after a four-month

investigation of chancellery files ordered by Schroeder.

 


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