From: "Verlag Neue Einheit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 17:13:39 +0200
To: "Kominform , Finlnand" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Neue Einheit: The Collapse of the Berliner Bankgesellschaft
The Collapse of the Berliner Bankgesellschaft
The scandal of the Berliner Bankgesellschaft is noteworthy not only
because of its extent which probably will largely surpass the 4
billion DEM initially named, but also because of the uncoverings about
the Berlin swamp of banks, real estate and government which it
abundantly offers. They also concern the conditions in the German high
society in general.
All the practical questions deriving from this bankruptcy will
invariably continue posing themselves also after the termination of
the coalition government of the CDU (Christian Democrats) and SPD
(Social Democrats) in Berlin; a change of government under the present
conditions matters hardly anything.
Following are some highlights from the public uncoverings up to today:
- The Berliner Bankgesellschaft, the majority of stakes of which
belong to the federal state of Berlin, is practicing, for example,
this variety of real estate funds:
"The 'Gardelegen'-fund is a very special way of investing
money, a land of milk and honey for selected investors. That
is to say: profits are credited to them, but for losses they
have no liability. The real estate subsidiary of the
Bankgesellschaft, the IBG [Immobilien- und Baumanagement GmbH]
helps out, rents the bureaus which have not found tenants, and
the imminent loss is averted from the investors. The
Bankgesellschaft has during the recent past become familiar
with losses anyway. 'Of course, in the first place the
privileged investors have to be protected'. The taxpayers of
Berlin are left standing. If the Bankgesellschaft compensates
the losses, it is less capable to pay dividends, so the hole
in the public budget becomes larger, valuation adjustments are
already announced.
Frequently valuation adjustments are to be equated with
losses. If this is the case, they have consequences
detrimental to the taxpayers here.
Not only the question as to the dividends has to be asked,
however, but also as to the method of the Berliner
Bankgesellschaft as such, namely the installation of a super-
secure investment with miraculous profits for a small circle
of privileged investors.
The bill is almost always footed by the taxpayers."
(From a press release by the Berlin association of taxpayers,
April 25, 2001. The translation is ours)
In a press release by the Social Democratic parliamentary party on the
occasion of the formation of the parliamentary investigating
commission it is said: " It is about CEOs of the Bankgesellschaft who
for themselves and for top managers from other firms who are friends
to them erect funds by which they were able to abundantly cash in,
whereas all the risks kept staying with the federal state of Berlin."
(tr. is ours)
A cautious commentary would be the following: if bank directors
together with managers from other firms whom they have initiated
practice a method by which losses for the participants are excluded by
falling back upon the bank's resources, and this means in the end upon
the public budget and the taxpayer, then they do not act as
businessmen but as self-appointed redistributors of public funds to
members of the high society, and they embezzle public property. This
has to be persecuted appropriately.
The part of the Bankgesellschaft's deficit originating solely in the
IBG is officially denominated more than 1 billion DEM.
- Already up to now the Aubis scandal has been dealt with in the
public relatively extensively. The owners of the firm called Aubis,
Neuling and Wienhold, obtained a loan of 550 million DEM from the
Berlinhyp, a subsidiary of the Bankgesellschaft, for buying and
renovating apartment houses of a certain type ("Plattenbauten") in
regions of the former German Democratic Republic. Upon the side of the
bank, this loan was managed by Klaus Landowsky, at the same time
leader of the Christian Democratic parliamentary party in the Berlin
house of representatives. Alone by this loan the Berlinhyp has taken a
loss of 200 Million DEM up to now, as the buildings acquired by Aubis
have a much lesser value today. The decline of their value had,
however, been foreseeable for a couple of years, partly because of the
strong decrease of the population in the Eastern federal states which
negatively affects the values of real estate there in general. When
the deal was struck, in any case special payments were made into the
hands of Landowsky by Aubis. What is more: the report of an internal
audit in 1997 stressed the dangers of this loan, with the paradoxical
result that the report disappeared and Landowsky was promoted to chief
real estate manager of the whole bank.
The state is involved in these machinations not only by the fact that
the federal state of Berlin owns the majority of the
Bankgesellschaft's stakes and leads it by its representatives in the
board of directors etc., but also by the role of the public monitoring
body. The Bundesaufsichtsamt f�r das Kreditwesen (Federal control
office for the banking sector), asked why it time and again had
accepted the way of business done by the Bankgesellschaft in spite of
numerous regular and also extraordinary controls during several years,
and although the risks for the bank's survival had already piled up
for a long time, did not know a public answer other than 'it must have
been an interconnection of unfortunate circumstances'. Corruption
within the monitoring body, perhaps also habituation to and acceptance
of such practices, because they aren't rare elsewhere either - do they
perhaps also belong to these circumstances? How many members of the
office did enjoy these privileged funds themselves, or profit from
them indirectly? This question must be admitted.
Apart from the federal state of Berlin, the Bankgesellschaft's most
important shareholder (more than 20 %) is the Norddeutsche Landesbank
(NordLB), being a state institute itself and during chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder's tenure as the prime minister of Lower Saxony, so to speak,
his bank. Schroeder was personally involved in setting up the
Bankgesellschaft in 1993. It is hardly possible that this important
partner bank should have failed to notice the peculiarity of certain
deals struck by the Bankgesellschaft.
As if it were a matter of course, "top managers" occupying key
positions in business as well as in the parliamentary system are
making directly criminal transactions or unrelentingly give utterly
risky loans to the extent of at least several hundred millions DEM; as
if it were a matter of course the public controllers, as well as, by
the way, also the most renowned private auditing firms certify their
balance sheets to be acceptable, and as if it were a matter of course
then, when the missing of 4 or 5 billions cannot be concealed any
longer, the government goes public with the demand that the taxpayer
bear the costs. ***New public debt shall be incurred, although this
very state has already since long ago landed in an abyss of debt and
is practicing a ruinous economizing with regard to the most elementary
public services as for example schools, child care and welfare. Berlin
pays 11 million DEM interest every day for its existing debt of appr.
70 billion DEM and has already for a long time not been able any more
to give appropriate equipment to its schools and to build and run day
nurseries.***
And as if it were a matter of course the people responsible for the
new scandal are free to pose in public, are only marginally, if at
all, molested by the judiciary and receive more millions in payments
and pensions for their "services".
In order to counter the Social Democrats' reproaches concerning the
role of its front figure Landowsky, the Christian Democrats pointed to
the fact that in the board of directors of the IBG, the aforementioned
subsidiary of the Bankgesellschaft, a representative of the Social
Democrats, Horst Goerler, had played a decisive role. Anyway the
Bankgesellschaft has served as a giant sinecure to the whole so-called
great coalition of CDU and SPD, as the press puts it, and it is the
whole great coalition which is politically responsible for the
violations of the public control which is incumbent also to the
federal state of Berlin. Eventually the judiciary is brilliant in its
pointed inactivity. Some preliminary proceedings are said to have been
started, but not against Landowksy, not against the heads of the
control institutions, not against the political leadership of Berlin.
Whoever is still wishing to publicly declare that the Federal Republic
of Germany is a "democratic state under the rule of law", gets an
occasion here to go into the concrete meaning of his words. The
"democratic separation of powers" here apparently works the following
way:
The parliamentary system fills the bank's leadings posts, the
controlling executive absolves them for their machinations, and the
judiciary remains inactive even if everything is already scorched. For
these circles "separation of powers" apparently means moving closer
together in white-collar criminal machinations and their covering, and
"rule of the law" means the responsibles are exempted from
prosecution.
The most elementary thing which a state really wanting to practice
democracy and rule of the law would long ago have done is the arrest
of quite a number of high representatives and the confiscation of
their whole private property for the cover of the damage they caused.
The accumulation and networking of criminal energy in the top floors
of the finance capitalist and political system which becomes apparent
here makes comparisons like "Bronx" or "Palermo of the North" looks
too weak. It actually is about a top spoils system located within the
ruling class of the Federal Republic of Germany which systematically
robs public funds. The working population is since long paying an
overwhelming amount of taxes and contributions anyway, the state's
share in the economy clearly exceeding 50%, but the state's
corresponding services and benefits have since long ceased to be
approximately equal, and what the population sees instead is "lack of
money" and the decay of public services. The political representatives
who now dare to announce even larger burdens in taxes and charges,
combined with further deteriorations of the public services, for no
other purpose than enabling them and their criminal friends to
continue, have cast aside any responsibility for the society and have
lost every feeling for reality. It is about stinking putrefaction in
the marrow of the ruling circles, it is about the fact that former
verdicts of the revolutionary socialist movement that this regime of
finance capitalism is dying, perishing capitalism are again fully
corroborated, and this is the debate impending first of all. It is
about the fact that getting rid of this system is more justified and
more urgent than it has been of any ancien r�gime of old.
Massive opposition against this need not wonder, especially in Berlin,
as nowhere else the mentality of taking and spending money which
originates in other peoples' work has become fixed like in Berlin, and
it has affected many hundreds of thousands of people. This fact, too,
must to be included in the debate.
The political parties are now attempting to condition the whole public
handling of the affair to "continue!". For example, it is said that
the taxpayer has no choice paying the billions of new debt, as 16.000
jobs of the Bankgesellschaft are lost otherwise. Jobs? Many hundreds
of thousands of jobs have been lost already because of the existence
of the white-collar criminal- political swamp governing here for 5
decades and throttling everything except perversion, decadence and
venality, and many more will go lost just because of the further
increasing overwhelming tax burden. How many children have not been
born just because already the previous Berlin governments put day
nurseries, social support and pedagogic institutions under a regime of
shrinking? This alleged care for the jobs of the Bankgesellschaft is
mere hypocrisy aiming at nothing but to save the ruling circles'
hotbed. If the Bankgesellschaft's work force really wants to fight for
jobs, they should strongly engage themselves in the uncoverings and
the calling-to-account, otherwise the public cannot have much interest
in supporting them.
Furthermore there is much botching now in order to restructure the
relations of the parliamentary parties, to bring about a "credible"
new government which the population will eventually tolerate ripping
itself off again. Even a petition for a so-called referendum, aiming
at new elections, is underway. But in Berlin's parliamentary system
there is no credible party, all of them being accessories and co-
profiteers of the Berlin swamp, even though to various degrees,
therefore the referendum is an attempt to misuse the people. The
population can neither have an interest, for example, in an increased
participation of the Green Party which already once took part in the
government - in order to further its own very peculiar political aims,
not, though, to really to go into action against corruption. The Green
party is the party of state dough par excellence, and such a party
will be the least to change anything. Besides, it has shown in the
federal government that it even makes special efforts for putting
through certain demands of finance capitalism, for example in the so-
called reform of the pensions system. Now also the PDS (Party of
Democratic Socialism) is receiving some attentiveness, but this party
shows much more interest in defaming the former socialist-communist
movement in the interest of the ruling finance capital than in serious
work for uncovering and fighting corruption.
A few weeks ago the German 'democratic and lawful' system represented
by its federal government of SPD and Greens decided a reform of the
pensions system, the visible part of which is up to now the increase
of burdens because of the newly introduced obligatory additional
private pensions funds. What will probably weigh much heavier,
however, is the channeling of hundreds of billions from wages into the
cashboxes of this very finance capital which in the case of the
Bankgesellschaft is showing at least parts of its true face, and the
assistant role of the state in this gigantic manipulation which in the
long run will cost the working population much more than the
Bankgesellschaft scandal.
Among the minimal demands the present scandal is giving rise to are:
* the complete uncovering about corruption and crimes in the
government-banks-swamp, the naming of the responsible persons
and their charge in front of the public and the judiciary
* the dismantling of the structures and firms which were the
main instruments for the occurrences
* the serious political debate what kind of a social system we
are actually living in and want to live in future
W. Grobe (member of editorial staff of Neue Einheit)
June 7, 2001
Internet statement 2001-19
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Internet: http://www.neue-einheit.com
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