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CRIME

Faulty AC could cost spy headquarters €9.7 mln

Authorities have discovered serious defects in the air conditioning system of the new headquarters being built to house Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service, potentially costing nearly €10 million to fix.

Faulty AC could cost spy headquarters €9.7 mln
Photo: DPA

There have been multiple problems since ground was broken in 2008 on the new Berlin headquarters of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which was supposed to cost €720 million. The organization’s roughly 4,000 workers were slated to move from Bavaria to Berlin next year, but its opening has been delayed until 2014.

Among the project’s biggest scandals happened this summer when it was revealed that building plans had mysteriously disappeared. It is also likely to run over cost by more than €80 million.

In the end, total costs for the new building, including relocating employees and technology will near €2 billion.

The troubles with the air conditioning unit are particularly galling because the contractor apparently failed to follow basic regulations, according to the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper. The air conditioner’s ventilation systems are inadequate and it was inexplicably never tested before its installation, the newspaper reported.

Andreas Kübler, spokesman for the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), said the defects had been “promptly detected,” but the government couldn’t get the responsible firm to adequately fix the problems.

The company’s contract was therefore terminated by the government, Kübler told the Morgenpost. It seems likely that taxpayers will have to pick up the €9.7 million tab for the reinstallation.

The BND declined to comment on the situation.

The Local/mdm

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CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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