Enlarge image
Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU): "There were no instructions to do anything individually"
Photo: Sven Hoppe / dpa
After the outbreak of the corona pandemic in spring 2020, masks were in demand in Germany - but Union MPs enriched themselves when it came to procurement.
Now Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder was invited as a witness in the mask investigation committee of the Bavarian state parliament - and denied personal responsibility in the mask affair.
Söder is the last witness invited to the panel, which started work about a year ago.
"There was no influence, no instructions to do something individual," said the CSU boss during his witness hearing.
The central responsibility for the purchase of masks lay with the Ministry of Health and the State Office for Health and Food Safety (LGL), said Söder.
He himself was responsible for setting the "big line" in fighting the pandemic.
»As Prime Minister you don't have to worry about every detail.
You don't count every mask either."
In his 20-minute opening statement, Söder recalled the lack of protective equipment in the first months of the pandemic: "It was an absolute emergency, deliveries from China were stopped." Shut up to lower viral load.
Söder criticizes the personal enrichment of politicians
The state government got involved in the procurement of masks because the global market had failed.
"The search was intensive, but not haphazard," emphasized Söder.
The benchmark for action was success, "so we get masks".
However, there was no influence whatsoever on the part of the government or its members.
"No one seriously believes that a minister or the State Chancellery said, this mask or not." At the same time, Söder criticized the fact that some politicians had used the emergency to enrich themselves personally through mask shops.
He means the mask affair uncovered by SPIEGEL: At the center of the affair are the long-standing CSU MPs Alfred Sauter and Georg Nüßlein, who collected lavish commissions at the beginning of the corona pandemic for brokering mask shops.
From a legal point of view, the Federal Court of Justice did not see the offense of bribery as fulfilled - because the members of parliament would have had to act in parliament themselves.
Sauter and Nüßlein always emphasized that they acted as lawyers in their roles.
Nevertheless, CSU top politicians have described the actions of the two former colleagues as morally reprehensible.
This is where the investigative committee of the Bavarian state parliament comes in: The aim of the committee set up by the state parliament in December 2021 at the urging of the SPD, Greens and FDP was and is, in particular, mask business by the state government in the corona pandemic as well as possible participation by politicians and sometimes high commission payments also to members of parliament to clear up.
mrc/dpa
