Schreiber affair
September 6, 2011
Germany's Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday ordered a partial retrial of Canadian-German arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber.
Schreiber was sentenced to eight years in prison in May 2010 for evading taxes of 7.3 million euros ($10.2 million) between 1988 and 1993. The court estimated that Schreiber had earned around 33 million euros in commissions or kickbacks during that time for mediating tank sales to Saudi Arabia and Airbus aircraft to Canada and Thailand.
The court must now clarify whether Schreiber was actually liable to pay taxes in Germany or whether his main residency was in Canada during that time, as his lawyers claim it was. Judges must also clarify whether the charges of fraud and bribery had exceeded the statute of limitations.
The former lobbyist and arms dealer, now 77 and in prison, was arrested in Canada in 1999 and fought for a decade against extradition to Germany.
Scandal tarnished political heavyweights
Schreiber is also accused of playing a key role in a slush-fund scandal in the 1990s that implicated several top-ranking German politicians.
Ludwig-Holger Pfahls, Germany's former deputy defense minister, was convicted of accepting secret payments from Schreiber for putting the stamp of approval on a Saudi arms deal.
The funding affair damaged the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and tarnished the legacy of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
An editorial criticizing Kohl, written by a then relatively unknown Angela Merkel, raised the current chancellor's profile and helped get her elected as head of the CDU the following year.
Author: Wilhelmina Lyffyt (dpa, Reuters, AFP, AP)
Editor: Martin Kuebler