Kohl 'took cash from France to win election

A German parliamentary inquiry into secret party funds broadened its scope this week to investigate a report that France's late former president Francois Mitterrand used $16m of taxpayers' money to get his friend and ally Helmut Kohl re-elected as chancellor in 1994.

The decision came as Germany's Christian Democrat Union (CDU) revealed that the total amount of untraceable funds on its books had reached almost DM29m ($15m).

The sum is higher than the party had previously acknowledged. But the alleged secret contribution from France was not included in the accounts disclosed on Monday, so the total may go much higher.

Pledging to cleanse the party's financial arrangements, the CDU's leader, Wolfgang Schauble, said the way it had gathered its revenue under his predecessor, Mr Kohl, was a "violation not only of the party funding laws, but of German democracy".

But the scandal is now about more even than that. The alleged French contribution raises the question of whether Europe's recent, rapid integration - largely a product of the Kohl-Mitterrand alliance - was bought on the sly.

The alleged French donation was reported to have been generated from commission on the sale of Leuna, a giant East German oil refinery, to the French oil consortium Elf Aquitaine in 1992. The cash was said to be part of a $45m payment to cover the deal.

The allegations, the most serious yet in the Kohl scandal, were made by Germany's ARD television and the French France Deux channel after a joint investigation into the roles played by Mitterrand and Elf Aquitaine in the affair.

German and French television quoted what they said was a high-ranking informant from Mitterrand's immediate circle who denied that the $16m payment to the CDU was illicit. "It was not a bribe: the money was for an election campaign. The payment was in the interests of the state - for Europe," the informant was quoted as saying.

A spokesman for the prosecutors' office in Paris said that an investigation into Elf's dealings had not so far found a link with illegal funding for the CDU.

But in Berlin the head of a parliamentary inquiry into the funding scandal said it would be looking at the possibility of a French connection. "We shall expand the focus of the inquiry," said Volker Neumann, a Social Democrat MP.

"We don't have any evidence for now, but we must investigate this. It seems to me unthinkable that one European state would use public money to try to influence an election in a neighbouring state - but in this world one can never be sure."

Releasing a long-awaited report from a team of independent auditors, the CDU's treasurer, Matthias Wissman, said the party had been unable to identify the origin of DM2.2m ($1m) paid to the party's central treasury between 1993 and 1998. This roughly corresponds to the amount Mr Kohl has already admitted taking and failing to disclose. He refuses to identify the donors on the grounds of confidentiality.

The reported transfer from France, said to have been made in 1993, is far bigger than anything traced by the auditors.

The Christian Democrats, who have been haemorrhaging support in the polls, have set aside DM8m ($4m) to cover their liabilities. But that could prove insufficient.

Although from different ends of the political spectrum, Mr Kohl and Mitterrand enjoyed a long-standing and close personal friendship. Both leaders viewed the Franco-German axis as a cornerstone of European integration and as a foundation for the successful reunification of Germany. They frequently stood together against Margaret Thatcher and John Major, underlining their personal friendship by holding hands during a commemoration of the first world war battle of Verdun, where France and German lost nearly 1m men.

They both also publicly supported Elf Aquitaine's involvement in Leuna, and saw it as a transaction which set the seal on their much-vaunted alliance. The deal is also said to have persuaded Mitterrand to become more than merely lukewarm in his support for German unification.

Mr Kohl has denied the allegations of an illegal Mitterrand connection. Through a spokesman he described them as "the continuation of a smear campaign against me".

If substantiated, the new allegations would answer many of the questions surrounding the Kohl scandal. Most significantly, they would destroy his repeated claims that neither he nor his government was "bribeable" on major political and economic policy decisions.

Mr Kohl has admitted accepting DM2m in undeclared campaign donations, but has refused to name the donors who paid into the secret party accounts he set up during his 25 years as Christian Democrat party chairman. He has insisted that to name them publicly would be a breach of confidence.

Last week the head of the CDU parliamentary party's politically sensitive finance and budgetary office was found hanged in his Berlin flat. The suicide of Wolfgang Hullen, 49, injected an element of tragedy into the slush fund scandal.

"A letter was found next to him. It appears that the reasons for his decision to take his own life were personal," said the CDU spokesman, Joachim Hoerster. But the Berlin state prosecutor revealed that it was investigating Hullen's suicide in connection with possible embezzlement.

The Berlin newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that Hullen's suicide note referred to his growing fear of an impending investigation.

Earlier, appearing bowed and guarded, Mr Schauble conceded to the Bundestag that during the 16 years of Mr Kohl's tenure as chancellor the law was "quite obviously" broken. "Trust in political parties and in the democratic institutions has been damaged," Mr Schäuble told the chamber, from which Mr Kohl was absent. "We will do everything possible to ensure that this cannot happen again."

Mr Kohl, who as an MP enjoys immunity from prosecution, was forced to resign in disgrace from his post as honorary party chairman last week.