Between 2017 and 2019, FDP boss Lindner gave several well-paid lectures for the Karlsruhe BBBank. The current Federal Minister of Finance also appears as the advertising face of the institute. He later arranged financing for a house purchase – according to the report, on unusual terms.
A private real estate purchase by Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner raises questions about possible conflicts of interest. The reason is a two-family house that the FDP leader bought in Berlin in early 2021 for 1.65 million euros. As the “Spiegel” reports, it was financed by the Karlsruhe BBBank, for which Linder has given at least seven lectures for a five-digit fee in recent years – also as Federal Minister of Finance: In May 2022 he gave an official greeting for an anniversary event of the cooperative bank . In 2018, Linder also appeared in a BBBank image video.
Bank Lindner had made extensive loans available for the purchase of the private house in Berlin. According to “Spiegel” information, the land charge amounts to a total of 2.8 million euros. The sum is said to exceed the purchase price of the property by EUR 1.15 million. Overfunding on this scale is unusual.
According to his Bundestag website, Lindner appeared as a guest on seven “Exclusive Evenings” at BBBank between 2017 and 2019 and received a total fee of between 35,000 and 73,000 euros. The sum cannot be quantified more precisely because additional income from members of the Bundestag was only published in stages at the time. If you add up all of Lindner’s additional income from the election period from 2017 to 2021, the FDP leader has income of 514,000 to 1,096,500 euros – in addition to the allowances as a member of the Bundestag.
According to the report, Lindner left questions about the amount and interest rate of his loans unanswered – as did the question of why he commissioned BBBank to finance his real estate. His lawyer said the loan was granted “at absolutely normal market conditions”. The higher credit volume in relation to the purchase price can be explained by the fact “that the property purchased is an unrenovated house”. All legal and other rules were “fully observed”.
The BBBank has therefore not answered any specific inquiries about the real estate financing. A spokeswoman emphasized that the “applicable legal requirements” were of course observed and that the lending guidelines “applied equally to all of our private customers”. In connection with so-called politically exposed persons, the bank has “implemented effective compliance structures, which in particular regulate a clear separation of the use of our banking services and possible other points of contact”.
The FDP boss is not the first top politician to make the headlines with an expensive property purchase. In the midst of the Corona crisis, the then Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn bought a villa in the posh Berlin district of Dahlem for 4.124 million euros – according to the “Spiegel” this is not far from Lindner’s house. There was particular criticism of Spahn because he tried to find out the names of journalists who were involved in researching his real estate deals.
