In the video: a minister in defense mode.
Affair about external consultants
Criminal charges against Ursula von der Leyen
The consultant affair is expanding: According to SPIEGEL information, the judiciary is determining whether external experts were working as bogus self-employed in the Ministry of Defense. Rumors of dubious buddy systems are circulating there.
By Matthias Gebauer | October 18, 2018, 9:59 a.m. 
Ursula von der Leyen -
Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen will not get rid of the affair surrounding the excessive use of management consultants . Now the CDU politician is even targeted by the judiciary. According to SPIEGEL information, the Berlin public prosecutor's office is checking whether the permanent deployment of management consultants in the defense department complies with the offense of deliberately caused bogus self-employment.
Justice spokesman Martin Steltner said the public prosecutor was checking whether there was any initial suspicion. The judiciary's investigations were triggered by a complaint against the minister dated September 30th, which apparently came from an insider close to her home.
Seemingly self-employed are people who appear to be self-employed but only have one client. If this is found, the client must pay the corresponding social benefits for the employee. If intent is proven, the employer can be prosecuted.
The report against von der Leyen assumes such an intention . Accordingly, "consultants were employed over a longer period of time who were employed there like employees".
The Federal Audit Office raised this allegation in a confidential report. The auditors went even further and found that the ministry was downright dependent on consultants in many areas, especially IT modernization. In another report, the auditors also criticized the fact that consulting contracts were almost always awarded privately without a tender and not checked for profitability.
Act like official officials
The ministry takes the suspicions raised in the complaint seriously. According to SPIEGEL information, the department has already reported six external management consultants to the pension insurance who had been working on an IT project in the ministry for months. The so-called clearing house now checks whether the consultants were bogus self-employed during their jobs in the ministry.
An internal instruction dated September 10th is enclosed with the notification as evidence. In the letter it is ordered that with immediate effect external consultants are no longer allowed to appear "as a ministerial authority", that post-like employment relationships must be abolished immediately and that all external parties have their ministry e-mail addresses and access to the protected intranet system withdrawn.
From the perspective of insiders, the letter suggests that a kind of advisory army has indeed formed in the ministry, which was firmly established and often appeared quite officially. The note in the letter that from now on one should pay attention to the "correct designation on door signs and in letterheads" suggests that the consultants were not only temporarily in the house, but had set up there.
For the minister, the affair about the advisors becomes even more unpleasant with the complaint. Since SPIEGEL reported on the Court of Auditors' allegations, von der Leyen immediately deployed several investigation teams to review all consultancy contracts that had been concluded since taking office. This is around 70 million euros annually, according to Insider. Today the minister has to declare herself in the budget committee.
Katrin Suder Photo: Maurizio Gambarini / dpa
Possible misconduct should be investigatedIn contrast to other affairs, von der Leyen can no longer blame her predecessor for the cause. It was she who brought McKinsey partner Katrin Suder as State Secretary when she took office. Suder should modernize the house with a keen mind and a lot of "change management" experience. Since it had to be quick, new consultants were always hired for projects.
It is already clear that the award of the contract was not all about the right things. The ministry has already admitted that consulting contracts worth eight million euros for an IT project were illegally accessed via a framework agreement from the federal government. Von der Leyen then announced that they wanted to investigate "indications of gross personal misconduct by individuals in connection with the award of contracts".
Have orders been given to friends?
Quite specific rumors are already circulating in the ministry about a kind of buddy system among in-house clients and external consultants. Often the name of a three-star general is mentioned who is personally close to an advisor. The former Bundeswehr man, on the other hand, has repeatedly landed larger orders from the ministry for his company in recent years.
The former State Secretary Suder also knows the management consultant very well, he was also at McKinsey before. When Suder moved to the ministry, he stopped at McKinsey, but from then on worked in the same portfolio for another consulting giant. If you think bad tongues, it only happened because McKinsey had no chance of doing ministry jobs after Suder's move to von der Leyen.
Von der Leyen's opponents currently have little inhibitions about directly addressing the minister with suspicions. A personal profile of a son of the minister has been circulating in the various WhatsApp groups of officials in the Bendler block for days. He has been with McKinsey's Silicon Valley office since 2015.
In the video: a minister in defense mode.
Die Pannenserie bei der Luftwaffe nimmt kein Ende. Von den modernen Eurofightern ist nur ein Bruchteil einsatzbereit und die Helikopterpiloten steuern echte Oldtimer durch die Luft. Damit sich das endlich ändert, will Verteidigungsministerin Ursula von der Leyen ihren Etat deutlich aufstocken.MIRROR TV
https://www-spiegel-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/berater-affaere-bei-der-bundeswehr-strafanzeige-gegen-ursula-von-der-leyen-a-1233811.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB&_x_tr_pto=ajax,se,elem
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