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A gangway at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport
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Andreas Arnold / dpa
No decision has yet been made in the struggle to sell the insolvent Frankfurt-Hahn Airport in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The creditors' meetings of the airport company initially did not approve the offer of the highest bidder, said insolvency administrator Jan Markus Plathner after the meeting without naming the company name.
According to consistent media reports, this is the offer from the Russian investor Viktor Charitonin.
The offer in question was not rejected for political reasons, nor was it finally rejected, Plathner said.
In fact, the airport's current majority shareholder and the investor "jointly decided to submit this contract to the appropriate authorities."
The decision on the approval of the purchase offer is now up to the Federal Ministry of Economics.
According to media reports, the pharmaceutical billionaire Charitonin is one of two investors with whom the insolvent Hunsrück Airport has concluded preliminary purchase agreements.
Accordingly, Charitonin, who is already a co-owner of the Nürburgring racetrack, submitted the higher bid.
According to reports, the second prospective buyer is the real estate developer WR Holding.
Plathner described both interested parties, with whom contracts had already been drawn up, as “good investors”.
In addition to these two interested parties, there are two more.
As an insolvency administrator, he keeps all options open in the interest of the creditors.
Further negotiations and higher bids are not excluded.
Sharp criticism
Although Kharitonin is not on the EU sanctions list because of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, he is said to have good connections with the Russian government.
The United States has the billionaire on a list related to allegations of manipulation in the 2016 US presidential election.
"Someone like that is not allowed to buy a property in Germany," said State Finance Minister Michael Boddenberg (CDU) to Hessischer Rundfunk.
"At the moment you shouldn't and can't do business with Russian oligarchs." He asked the head of the Chancellery and the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs "to examine all possible ways of preventing this sale."
Hahn Airport is located in Rhineland-Palatinate between Mainz and Trier on the site of a former US military base.
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate sold its majority stake in the airport to the Chinese HNA Airport Group in 2017.
The federal state of Hesse continues to hold a minority stake of 17.5 percent.
In the course of the corona pandemic, the airport company slipped into insolvency at the end of 2021.
The insolvency proceedings were opened in February 2022 and Plathner was appointed insolvency administrator.
sak/AFP
