The new owner of the "Berliner Zeitung", Holger Friedrich, must be held to have made his business interests as a newspaper publisher and as a shareholder of a diagnostics company not transparent. On November 8, his paper reported on the front page an "East German success story in medicine."
In it, the readers learned about the IPO of the company Centogene from Rostock, according to the sheet "World market leader in the genetic analysis of rare diseases". Now the company has again taken a "big step", it was said: With the move to the US stock exchange Nasdaq should flow about 60 million US dollars in the corporate treasury.
What the readers did not learn: Publisher Friedrich is himself a shareholder of Centogene. According to US Securities and Exchange Commission, he held in June by a Berlin-based company 3.27 percent of the company. In addition, Friedrich is a member of the Centogene Supervisory Board. He received the information according to 2018 a remuneration of 23,000 euros.
Friedrich is also active in the IT company Core as Managing Director. The core homepage contains statements reminiscent of the "Berlin Embassy" that Friedrich and his wife Silke recently published in their new newspaper: "Limited participation of the marketing and media industry in the political discourse," it says the core home page, "short-term price changes in political opinion are not perceived early on and an impairment of profitability is risked."
Interviewed by SPIEGEL on possible conflicts of interest, Friedrich had a media lawyer announce that he "currently sees no reason to" comment on business internals ".
In September it became known that the entrepreneur couple Silke and Holger Friedrich had bought the publishing house of the "Berliner Zeitung". On November 8, in the same issue as Centogene's initial public offering, the new owners released a statement of principle. The two-page long text with the heading "Berlin Embassy" was taken in the industry partly with surprise. Among other things, made the numerous cryptic formulations of the Manifesto for incomprehension and criticism.
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