Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor Feldmann has to answer in court. It’s about the employment and above-average remuneration of his wife in a day care center and the alleged support of Feldmann’s election campaign by workers’ welfare workers.
The Lord Mayor of the Hessian metropolis, Peter Feldmann, has to answer in a corruption trial before the district court in Frankfurt am Main. To begin with, the indictment was read out, accusing the 64-year-old SPD politician of accepting benefits in connection with an affair involving excessive salaries and allegations of fraud at the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO). In less than three weeks, if the process should still be running, Feldmann’s deselection will be voted on in Frankfurt.
Feldmann’s former partner and later wife is said to have received too much money and a company car as the head of a German-Turkish daycare center. The employment relationship is said to have been closed from 2014 due to his position as mayor. “The remuneration was clearly excessive for a young professional,” said public prosecutor Johannes Schmidt at the indictment reading. “If she hadn’t been the mayor’s partner at the time, she wouldn’t have been promised the position of daycare manager.”
In the 2018 election campaign, the Frankfurt AWO is said to have supported Feldmann by raising donations. In return, he is said to have tacitly agreed with the person in charge of the district association at the time to “benevolently” consider AWO interests in his office, Schmidt continued.
The former chairwoman of the AWO district association in Wiesbaden and “special commissioner” for refugee aid in Frankfurt is said to have told Feldmann in messages that she had collected donations for his election campaign. “You could always build on our loyalty – so we’re building on you now,” she is said to have written in a chat to Feldmann. Some of the money that Feldmann’s wife received from the AWO flowed into a joint account for the couple. The proceedings against Feldmann’s wife, from whom he now lives separately, and against those responsible for AWO were separated.
His wife and the former managing director of AWO Frankfurt were actually supposed to testify on the next day of the trial on Thursday next week. However, since the lawyers announced that their clients wanted to exercise their right to remain silent, they were dumped again. The process comes at a bad time for Feldmann: On November 6, a referendum will be held on whether he will lose his position. Two more of the five scheduled continuation dates will take place before the referendum.
The election campaign is already in full swing. The government coalition of the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt as well as the opposition CDU hung up posters across the city calling for Feldmann to be voted out of office. Her tenor is: “For a cross, let’s forget all the colors.” For the result to count, at least 30 percent of those entitled to vote must participate in the referendum. This hurdle is considered high. Feldmann was also unable to escape the calls to vote him out of office last Tuesday: Members of the city council held up exactly these posters early in the morning.
Interest in the trial of the mayor was immense, and the auditorium filled up quickly. Despite the great public interest, the district court had decided not to use any of the large trial rooms for the hearing.
Feldmann himself entered the courtroom silently, a mug of coffee in hand. During the reading of the indictment, the 64-year-old prosecutor looked at Schmidt. After the end of the first day of negotiations, Feldmann said: “I would like a fair and unbiased clarification.” A bias application by his defense against the presiding judge Werner Gröschel had previously failed. Feldmann’s defense attorney David Hofferbert announced that he would make a statement for Feldmann on the next day of the hearing. “There is no evidence of a wrongful agreement,” he said. Feldmann had always denied the allegations in the previous months.