AThe Hessian Minister of Justice Roman Poseck (CDU) has rejected accusations made by SPD parliamentary group leader Günter Rudolph against the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office in the Akman case as “unfounded suspicions”. As reported, the authority has filed charges against the former head of the Frankfurt main office, Tarkan Akman, for accepting advantages. He is said to have arranged jobs for his sister with Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) and in return offered to consider her interests in the office in a benevolent manner.
In a press release in mid-March, Rudolph then established a temporal connection between the announcements by the public prosecutor’s office and the election of Frankfurt’s mayor. He complained about a “questionable information policy by the public prosecutor’s office”. “I hope that the ugly but obvious suspicion that a public prosecutor’s office, which is under the direction of a CDU minister, could have tried to improperly influence the outcome of the mayoral election in Frankfurt, is not confirmed,” Rudolph wrote in the statement. For a special session of the legal policy committee on Wednesday evening, he presented an urgent report request with 16 questions, which Poseck had to answer.
“Prosecutors only act according to the law”
The minister emphasized that the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt conducted the proceedings “exclusively in accordance with the law”. In principle, the Hessian public prosecutor’s offices processed investigations independently and autonomously. They are obliged to prosecute criminal offenses regardless of political interests, election dates or professional positions of the accused. In principle, there are no agreements between the public prosecutor’s offices and the ministry during preliminary investigations. The public prosecutor’s offices also determined their own public relations work.
According to a relevant order, the public prosecutor’s office was obliged to inform the city of Frankfurt, as Akman’s employer, about the indictment. This was initiated on February 16, 2023 at the same time as the indictment was sent to the district court.
March 5th was the first election day in Frankfurt. From March 6, the public prosecutor’s office received inquiries from the press about the case, Poseck said. The questions were only answered abstractly because the accused had not yet confirmed receipt of the indictment at that time.
On March 13, 2023, the public was finally informed about the indictment in a detailed press release. “It would be wrong and unlawful to stop investigations and final decisions based on elections,” Poseck said. “Such a pause would certainly result in the accusation of interfering with the election.”
“Undermines trust in our rule of law”
According to the minister, the public prosecutor’s offices in Hesse had his “full support”. He does not allow the investigators to be accused by the SPD faction leader that they do not act solely in accordance with the law. “There is not the slightest reason for conspiracy theories,” says Poseck. “Anyone who makes baseless accusations against the judiciary, as the SPD parliamentary group did in their press release on March 13, 2023, undermines trust in our constitutional state.”
The committee meeting is not about the press release, but about the report request from the Social Democrats, countered Gerald Kummer, the legal policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group. The temporal connection with the mayor election also triggered speculation in the press. “Our report request is now used to support trust in the judiciary,” said Kummer, thereby attracting the ridicule of the CDU parliamentarians. “You have crossed a red line,” said MP Christian Heinz. The SPD have done massive damage to the judiciary, but also to itself. Kummer said that he personally had no doubts about the work of the judiciary.
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