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The clarification of the RBB affair continues
Photo: Carsten Koall / dpa
It had been specially scheduled as a special meeting, but now had to be postponed by a week: At the meeting of the Broadcasting Council of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) on Friday in Berlin, too few members appeared to have a quorum, like Council Chairman Ralf Roggenbuck, according to Deutscher Press agency said at the beginning.
He named next Friday as an alternative date and closed the meeting again after just a few minutes.
Roggenbuck told the dpa that 13 members were present at the meeting.
15 would have been necessary for a majority.
The council consists of 29 members.
It was therefore planned that the control committee wanted to deal with the broadcaster's legal fees relating to the clarification of the felt scandal in the broadcaster.
Director Katrin Vernau was to report.
The background was an RBB report from the beginning of the week, which also raised the question of how efficiently costs for lawyers are used and how exactly their order is.
In a letter to the employees of the public ARD broadcaster published on the intranet on Thursday, broadcaster boss Vernau had already listed four law firms, according to the dpa, to which costs of around 1.4 million euros were distributed between the end of June and the end of 2022.
Final report pending
According to the broadcaster, almost one million of these are attributable to the law firm, which, according to the broadcaster, was consulted by the supervisory board and the RBB compliance officer in the summer to clarify the RBB scandal.
A partial report is already available, a final report is still pending.
This law firm said on Friday at the request of the dpa: It was confirmed that the compliance officer and the board of directors had been mandated since July 2022.
“The sole subject of the mandate is the independent clarification, examination and legal assessment of possible rule violations or possible breaches of duty at the RBB.” Thousands of documents and e-mails from the past few years would have to be viewed and evaluated.
In the course of the RBB affair about nepotism, acceptance of benefits, infidelity and waste, which got rolling last summer, the director Patricia Schlesinger had to resign.
dam/dpa
