‘German pres. immunity must be lifted’

Prosecutors in the northern state of Hanover said on Thursday that there was “initial suspicion” that Wulff improperly accepted and granted benefits, which is an offence for a public official, punishable by up to three years’ prison.

Wulff is accused of receiving a 649,000-dollar (about 500,000-euro) loan at below market rates from the wife of a wealthy businessman in October 2008, while he was serving as governor of Lower Saxony state.

He has also been criticized over a furious call he made to the chief editor of Germany’s widely-circulated newspaper The Bild before it reported publicly on the loan.

Apart from the dubious deal, there are now new allegations that David Groenewold, a German film entrepreneur, paid for Wulff and his wife to stay at a luxury hotel on the German resort island of Sylt in 2007.

A year earlier, Lower Saxony’s government had approved a 5.3-million-dollar (4-million-euro) credit guarantee for one of Groenewold’s projects.

Wulff was Lower Saxon state premier from 2003 to 2010, when he was appointed as the German president.

Parliament in Berlin now has to decide whether criminal proceedings against Wulff can be carried out. If the inquiry gets the parliament’s approval, Wulff would be the first German president in history to face a formal criminal investigation.

MN/MF/MA

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