"Primary Suspicion"

The Cologne prosecutor's office is satisfied with its defendants from E.ON Ruhrgas

On Wednesday evening it became known in Cologne that local prosecutors had searched the premises of the gas company E.ON Ruhrgas in Essen. As employees of the prosecutor's office told the local press, more than a hundred municipal officials of the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, as well as five employees of the company itself, are under suspicion. The investigation will have to establish whether there was any use of official position for personal gain in the relationship between E.ON Ruhrgas and these officials. In particular, it is necessary to answer the question whether the trips of these persons to France and Spain, paid for by E.ON Ruhrgas, are not contrary to the law.

The official representative of the Cologne prosecutor's office, Günter Feld, noted that the investigation against employees of E.ON Ruhrgas, which only now became known, has in fact been ongoing for approximately six months. He also said that a “primary suspicion” of a conflict with the law arose among one of the prosecutor’s office employees after he read information in the newspaper about such a trip by land officials. The prosecutor's office is required by law to respond to such information. However, until now, as Feld noted, investigators cannot unambiguously answer the main question of interest to investigators - whether these trips influenced the decision-making process in favor of E.ON Ruhrgas on the part of a number of local and regional gas companies buying from it gas. There is no evidence yet to indicate that in response to trips sponsored by the concern, consumers chose E.ON Ruhrgas as a supplier rather than any other company. Only in this case would it be possible to talk, for example, about bribery of officials.

Nevertheless, on the basis of “primary suspicions” the entire mechanism of prosecutorial inquiry, used in such cases, came into motion. Searches, in particular at the premises of E.ON Ruhrgas, according to a representative of the prosecutor's office, led to assumptions that “certain trips were not due to official needs.” “Suspicions intensify especially when members of their families went on trips with those invited at the company’s expense,” Günter Feld especially noted. This incident took place during an excursion to Barcelona.

It is expected that the Cologne prosecutor's office will transfer the case for further proceedings to the communes at the location of the travel participants. In addition, the official representative of the Cologne prosecutor's office particularly praised the "cooperative" approach of E.ON Ruhrgas employees to the investigation: they provided the prosecutor's office with all the documents necessary for the investigation. Yesterday, at the headquarters of E.ON Ruhrgas in Essen, they did not tell the Vremya Novostey correspondent any details, citing the fact that the process was not completed.

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin