Berlin: Pressure mounted on German President Christian Wulff to step down after the state prosecutor announced plans to open a criminal investigation against him on charges of corruption during his earlier tenure as prime minister of a state.
The prosecutor’s office in Hannover said last evening it had requested the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, to lift the president’s immunity against prosecution as it has reasons for an “initial suspicion” that he took advantage of his official position for personal gains.
The charges relate to Wulff’s tenure as prime minister of Lower Saxony between 2003 and 2010, before he became the head of state. It could be possible that Wulff “may have improperly received and granted benefits,” a press statement said.
This will be the first time in Germany’s post-war history that a head of state is subjected to a criminal investigation while in office. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been defending President Wulff in spite of a series of corruption allegations against him since mid-December, refrained from making any comments about the prosecutor’s decision.
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which nominated and voted for him to become the president in 2010 and its coalition partner Free Democratic Party (FDP) also gave no official reaction.
A government spokesman said the chancellor “took note” of it, but she will travel to Rome on Friday as planned for a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. Meanwhile, Germany’s main opposition parties stepped up their calls for the embattled president to step down and vowed to vote in the Bundestag for stripping his immunity.
Andrea Nahles, general secretary of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) said her party would do everything to lift President Wulff’s immunity by the Bundestag. An investigation by the state prosecutor is inappropriate with the president’s office and Wulff must take the consequences for that, she said in a TV interview. Claudia Roth, leader of the Green Party, urged Wulff to step down “without doing further damage to the president’s office”.
Wulff has been facing a barrage of criticisms in recent weeks over number of corruption allegations, including the financing of his private villa in Hannover. (PTI)