Flicked out of Office

Rainer Barzel, 60, president of the Bundestag and the nation's second-highest official after Chancellor Helmut Kohl, resigned last week in a scandal that has seriously shaken the two-year-old Kohl government. Barzel was named as the recipient of 1.7 million deutsche marks (now worth more than $700,000) from Friedrich Flick Industrieverwaltung, West Germany's largest private industrial firm. The Bundestag leader thus be came the latest victim in the Flick affair, an influence-peddling scandal that has claimed 16 public figures in two years.

According to Der Spiegel, which broke the story, a Bonn prosecutor's findings have suggested that Barzel may have received the money through his Frankfurt law office. Barzel was allegedly paid off in exchange for giving up the leadership of the Christian Democratic Union in 1973 in favor of Flick's choice for the post, Kohl. Though Barzel denied any wrongdoing and no charges have been filed, he agreed to resign after a half-hour private chat with Kohl. The Chancellor himself is scheduled to appear before a parliamentary investigating committee next week to explain reported expenditures on his behalf by Flick between 1974 and 1980.