Baku / 27.10.17 / Turan: The Frankfurt regional branch of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU, the ruling party of Germany) received EUR 28,000 from the Azeri oil and gas company SOCAR in 2012 in violation of the rules of Germany on donations. This was announced on October 26 by the media consortium, which includes the public broadcaster NDR, WDR and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
According to the publication, two payments - € 3,000 and € 25,000 - were made by the SOCAR office in Germany to the account of the CDU district organization in Frankfurt in late February 2012.
This caused a four-year legal dispute with the administration of the Bundestag, as German law prohibits parties from receiving donations from countries outside the EU.
Auditors at the CDU headquarters in Berlin notified the Bundestag administration supervising the financing of the parties of the situation. Already in the autumn of 2013 the administration decided that, according to the law, such a gift is inadmissible, in spite of the fact that it came from the German account.
After that, the CDU transferred the full amount of the donation to the federal treasury. Despite the violation of the law, the party will not have to pay a fine - the administrative court of Leipzig decided in April this year that turnout can not only mitigate punishment, but also help completely avoid it.
The Bundestag administration did not check why the Azerbaijani state concern donated the CDU tens of thousands of EUR. However, according to the head of the German branch of SOCAR Elmar Mammadov, interaction with politicians and officials is important "against the background of the geopolitical significance of Azerbaijan and SOCAR." -02D-
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