Gerhard Schröder abdicated his tenure on the board of state-owned Rosneft after losing privileges given by the German government.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has asked to resign from the board of directors of the Russian state oil company. Rosneftthe company announced on Friday (May 21, 2022).
The decision comes after the German parliament approved the removal of privileges granted to Schröder for having ruled the country from 1998 to 2005, as a private office and government-funded staff. The former chancellor is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and has been pressured for not speaking out about the conflict in Ukraine, which reached its 87th day on Saturday (May 21).
In addition to Schröder, German businessman Matthias Warnig will also leave the company. He was director of Nord Stream AG, the company responsible for building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, with the capacity to transport 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
With both, the volume of gas from Russia to Germany would double to 110 billion m³/year. However, the current German chancellor Olaf Scholz has indefinitely suspended pipeline approval 1,230 km long in February. Soon after, the company filed a bankruptcy filing.
The approval for the construction of the gas pipeline was signed by Schröder himself while he was head of government in Germany in 2005. He migrated to the Russian private sector at the end of his term. He was succeeded by Angela Merkel, German Chancellor until December 2021.
In the note, the oil company praises the work of both and states that it will continue to “incorporate their approaches of broad analysis, careful planning and modeling of the projects being implemented, as well as the principles of continuity and market-based consideration”.
The former German chancellor had been appointed by Putin in February to take a post on the board of Russian state-owned Gazprom at the end of June. With the removal decision, the effectiveness of the mandate is uncertain.
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