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CRIME

Police raid German-based Ford plants in corruption probe

Some 100 police officers raided sites linked to the US automaker Ford in Germany early Monday in connection with a corruption probe, prosecutors in the western city of Cologne said.

Published: 13 December 2010 17:33 CET
Police raid German-based Ford plants in corruption probe
Photo: DPA

Searches were carried out at Ford plants, at an unidentified company in the western German city of Leverkusen, and at about 30 other locations that included private homes, a statement said.

“We also arrested one person,” Cologne state prosecutor Christina Pohlen told news agency DPA.

Prosecutors said they had been working since September on an investigation that involved Ford staff and others suspected of corruption.

According to the prosecutor’s office in Cologne, Ford staff are suspected of regularly receiving “material advantages” from companies that work with the automaker or which sought contracts with it.

In exchange, the Ford workers allegedly favoured benefactors when contracts were being decided upon or established false bills in their favour.

“The state prosecutor’s office also examined the work stations of several people under suspicion at the company Ford,” company spokesperson Bernd Meier told DPA, adding that the company was working closely with investigators.

AFP/DPA/ka

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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.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
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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