Kohl inquiry dropped

Press, 22 May 1986, Page 6

Kohl inquiry dropped

NZPA-Reuter Bonn State prosecutors in the West German city of Koblenz had dropped legal proceedings against the Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, which had been opened on suspicion of perjury, a spokesman said yesterday. The Chief Prosecutor, Mr Hans Seeliger, had ruled that the evidence gathered in a three-month probe into allegations that Dr Kohl gave false evidence to a Parliamentary inquiry did not warrant pursuing the case. The investigation against Dr Kohl, opened in February, had cast a shadow over his political future in the run-up to elections in January next year.

Prosecutors in Bonn announced in Marcb that they were opening a second investigation against Dr Kohl over simi-

lar allegations to those lodged in Koblenz. But legal experts and political commentators have always said that the Koblenz probe was more serious and predicted that if prosecutors there decided against filing charges their colleagues in Bonn would probably follow suit. Most commentators had predicted that Dr Kohl could be forced to quit if the prosecutors in either case had decided there was sufficient evidence to bring him to trial. The allegations against Dr Kohl in both cases were lodged by a former Green Party Parliamentary deputy, Otto Schily.

In the Koblenz case he alleged that Dr Kohl had deliberately misled an investigation by the Rhine-land-Palatinate state Parliament last year into illegal party donations. Under questioning by

deputies in the state capital, Mainz, Dr Kohl denied he knew that a tax-ex-empt charity foundation had been used to launder funds for his Christian Democratic Party. He later qualified his answer in written evidence to the investigation. The investigation in Bonn centres on Mr Schily’s allegations. that Dr Kohl committed perjury when questioned by a Bonn Parliamentary committee in 1984 on party donations by the giant Flick concern.

West German legal experts have mostly said there appeared to be more evidence to back up the Koblenz case than the proceedings in Bonn. Since opening their investigations, prosecutors in both cities have analysed documentary evidence against the Chancellor and questioned witnesses.