Agence France Presse
English
Thu 29 Jun 2000
12:10 GMT (08:10 Eastern Time)
International News

BERLIN, June 29 (AFP ) - The slush fund scandal that has tarnished the record of Germany's longest-serving chancellor, Helmut Kohl, began last November when prosecutors issued an arrest warrant against Walter Leisler Kiep, former treasurer of Kohl's Christian Democratic Union. Following are key dates in the Kohl affair.

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1999

November 4: Prosecutors at Augsburg, in southern Germany, issue an arrest warrant against former CDU treasurer Walter Leisler Kiep for tax fraud.

November 17: Kiep tells investigators that the German-Canadian arms merchant Karl-Heinz Schreiber handed the CDU's chief accountant Horst Weyrauch a suitcase containing one million German marks (500,000 euros, dollars), as the spin-off from the sale of German tanks to Saudi Arabia in 1991.

November 30: Kohl admits the existence of secret accounts for party funds. December 2: The Bundestag orders an investigation into CDU party fund-raising activities. December 16: Kohl admits on television that he had received up to two million marks in illegal, secret funds but refuses to reveal the names of the donors.

December 18: The German chancellery says important documents concerning the sale of the Leuna oil refinery in eastern Germany to the French group Elf have disappeared.

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2000

January 2: The daily Die Welt says 1.1 million marks in cash were transferred in 1997 from the CDU parliamentary party's accounts into the party's secret accounts.

January 3: Bonn prosecutors open a criminal investigation into Kohl's handling of secret political donations to the CDU. January 10: CDU president Wolfgang Schaeuble admits on television that he received a donation to party funds of 100,000 marks in cash from Schreiber in 1994.

January 14: CDU officials in the state of Hesse admit they falsely presented millions of marks paid into a Swiss bank account as donations from deceased party sympathisers.

January 18: Kohl is asked to give up his post as honorary CDU president unless he reveals the name of the anonymous donors.

February 16: Schaeuble resigns as CDU leader. March 2: Kohl offers to raise funds to pay fines levied against the CDU, but is criticised by opponents and allies.

April 13 : Schaeuble testifies to a parliamentary committee, saying he had accepted the secret contribution from Schreiber.

June 23: Kohl is accused of losing his grip on reality after he compares his plight to that of the Jews.

June 28: Investigators reveal that two-thirds of the chancellery data files including documents that could have a bearing on the slush fund scandal and other questionable deals were wiped out after Kohl's election defeat in 1998 and before Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder took office.

June 29: Kohl testifies before parliamentary investigators, accepting responsibility for running slush funds while in office but denying taking any personal advantage from them.