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A Minister is accused

As if the nuclear missile issue were not worrisome enough for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, he faced the possibility last week of losing one of his key ministers as the result of a long-simmering financial scandal. After two years of investigation, Bonn Public Prosecutor Franzbruno Eulencamp announced that his office planned to indict Economics Minister Count Otto Lambsdorff on charges of bribery and corruption. Also accused were former Economics Minister Hans Friderichs, now chairman of West Germany's second-ranking Dresdner Bank, and three other officials. Eulencamp asked the Bundestag to lift the immunity Lambsdorff enjoys as a member of parliament. Despite strong expressions of support for Lambsdorff from Kohl and his Cabinet, the Bundestag did just that, making a formal presentation of the charges possible.

Eulencamp's announcement, though expected, struck Bonn with explosive force. At issue is Lambsdorff s political survival, and with it the ability of the Kohl government to retain public confidence. The investigators charged that from 1975 to 1981 Friderichs and Lambsdorff had accepted nearly $200,000 from West Germany's largest privately owned industrial concern, the Duesseldorf-based Friedrich Flick Industrieverwaltung, in exchange for granting the firm generous tax exemptions. Lambsdorff, 56, is a respected member of the Free Democratic Party, the minority partner in Kohl's Christian Democrat-dominated government, and an architect of Bonn's plans for economic recovery. He promptly denied any wrongdoing, protesting, "I never received, requested or negotiated a single mark from Flick while minister."

Pending a decision by the investigating judge to send the case to trial, the F.D.P. leadership decided last week that Lambsdorff should stay on as Economics Minister. But the opposition Social Democrats called for his resignation. Said Party Floor Leader Hans-Jochen Vogel: "An ordinary government employee would be suspended until the end of the proceedings." One of Kohl's concerns is that Lambsdorff's resignation would encourage hard-line Conservative Franz Josef Strauss, the maverick leader of the Christian Democrats' Bavarian-based sister party, to make a play for the Economics Minister's portfolio. Kohl will resist such a move. But if Strauss were to succeed, Bonn's centrist policies could begin to slant to the right. qed This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.