Dhe next few months will be uncomfortable for Baden-Württemberg Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU). This week, the state parliament will set up the investigative committee on abuse of power with the votes of the SPD and FDP. He is supposed to investigate mistakes that the minister is said to have made in investigating a sex affair in the close leadership of the state police in his ministry.
Since the formation of the first green-black coalition, Strobl has been the whipping boy of the FDP parliamentary group leader, Hans-Ulrich Rülke. Rülke once described the CDU politician as “Germany’s worst interior minister”. Now, for the first time since the first green-black government was formed in 2016, the opposition could have the opportunity to end Strobl’s political career and destabilize the coalition. Because Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) and his deputy Strobl form the trust axis of the government.
For Strobl, the investigative committee is the greater danger than the public prosecutor’s office. In several investigations, the latter is examining whether Strobl instigated the betrayal of official secrets and whether criminal prosecution has been frustrated in office because the Minister of the Interior did not authorize the public prosecutor’s office to investigate the sex affair further in his ministry.
“Promoted exceptionally quickly”
At the center of the investigation are all the events surrounding the inspector of the state police, Andreas R., who has since been suspended because of alleged sexual harassment. “We want to know how the allegations against the police inspector were cleared up. Above all, however, we want to know whether all the rules were observed when filling this position and whether the appointment was already certain before the assessment was available,” says Sascha Binder, member of the SPD state parliament. The FDP member of parliament Julia Goll adds: “The police inspector who was suspended from duty was promoted to police inspector by the deputy LKA president extremely quickly, namely within 13 months. This raises the question of why you chose Mr. R..”
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Andreas R. took office in November 2020 at the instigation of Strobl. A year earlier, Stefanie Hinz had been appointed the new state police chief – the first woman to hold this office. The Minister of the Interior had thus shaped the state police leadership according to his wishes. At the end of 2021 it became known that Andreas R. was said to have promised faster promotion in a video call to a chief inspector in the event of sexual compliance. Strobl promised to explain the events comprehensively; At the end of December, however, he handed a journalist from the newspaper “Stuttgarter Nachrichten” a letter from the accused’s lawyer.
The SPD and FDP formulate the investigative mandate very extensively in the appointment decision and name three subject areas: dealing with sexual harassment in the state authorities, especially in the state police. The clarification of the circumstances that could have caused Strobl to give the lawyer’s letter to a journalist. And finally the promotion practice of the police in recent years. The last complex could have the greatest political effect: If party affiliation or proximity to a party or an expected political compliance played a role in this area, then Strobl’s days in the Ministry of the Interior would probably be numbered.
Illegal promotions?
After an initial inspection of the files in the Ministry of the Interior, the two opposition factions of the FDP and SPD are of the opinion that there are at least indications of illegal promotions within the police force. It must be examined whether there were agreements before the selection of R. or previously drawn up lists of personnel. This insinuates that there was political influence in filling R’s post. Behind this there is also the question of whether the current Secretary of State for Migration in the Ministry of Justice, Siegfried Lorek (CDU), could have influenced personnel policy. Lorek was a senior police officer and, before the formation of the second green-black coalition, behaved as Strobl’s indispensable police-political adviser. The committee of inquiry should also discuss whether R. had ever been sexually abusive before being appointed to the high office.
Strobl’s decision not to allow the public prosecutor’s investigations should also cause longer discussions in the committee. The SPD and FDP want to find out how this decision came about, whether the impact on the ministry management was examined and whether the state government tends more often to refuse the public prosecutor the authorization to conduct investigations. There seems to be a legal gray area here. The law does not regulate clearly enough how to deal with such inquiries from the public prosecutor’s office if the officials – in Baden-Württemberg these are the ministerial directors and the minister himself – are involved in such a procedure.
Strobl is also CDU state chairman, critical discussions about him in the party are not yet publicly perceptible. However, when the public prosecutor’s office recently searched the minister’s offices, some officials began to ask critical questions internally.