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It should start in twelve days.

But before it even starts, one of the most ambitious reform projects in German transport policy is already deep in crisis.

The federal autobahn GmbH, which is to take over central responsibility for federal highways from January 1st, cannot start normal operations in many areas.

Meanwhile, costs are skyrocketing.

Indications of irregularities in employment contracts of executives

provide an alarm, but are not made transparent.

Once again, Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) looks like a bad steward of an inheritance that is already barely sustainable.

Scheuer took over the car toll, which was constructed contrary to European law, from his predecessor and party colleague Alexander Dobrindt, drove it to the wall and is now confronted with well-established allegations of legal violations and a lie in the Bundestag.

Even under Dobrindt, the motorway plan was created, which turns out to be completely overambitious.

According to this plan, for which the Basic Law was specifically changed in 2017, the federally owned GmbH takes the place of the previous mixed administration of federal and state governments and, under the leadership of a new federal trunk road office in Leipzig, is to organize everything that affects local highways, from new construction to maintenance.

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But that is even less successful under Scheuer than the critics of the reform, especially in the federal states, have predicted.

Because the huge administrative reform is legally and organizationally complicated, there are signs that the costs for external consultants will increase to up to 130 million euros.

Overall, the mere establishment of the GmbH is likely to devour more than 300 million euros.

The Federal Audit Office recently found that some regulations for the transition from state and federal jurisdiction are unconstitutional.

It is therefore possible that already concluded contracts for road construction projects with a total cost of around 20 billion euros have to be put out to tender.

And because many of the previous country employees do not want to switch to the GmbH, there are large gaps in personnel.

What is particularly dicey for Scheuer is that his own ministry discovered “irregularities” in connection with possibly excessive salaries and severance pay regulations for management personnel of the GmbH.

The concern that this triggered is so great that external auditors were appointed to investigate the events.

According to "Handelsblatt" there is a suspicion that contracts differ greatly from what the supervisory board had approved.

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But the results of the test that began in the summer did not make it public.

When the budgetary spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, Sven-Christian Kindler, wanted to find out more with a small question, the ministry referred him to a letter to the budget committee in response in October - but it said nothing about those irregularities.

When Kindler tried to get the external auditor's report on an application under the Freedom of Information Act, the application was rejected by the ministry.

Sven-Christian Kindler persisted and again asked for information on the inadequately answered questions of his little inquiry.

The new responses from the ministry gave the impression that the employment contracts for the top level of management were in order.

But reasons or details were not given.

The ministry's second reply did not respond to suspicions that there had been irregularities at middle management level.

In addition, Scheuer's house persistently refuses to make the finished report of the external auditor transparent.

The ministry does not even publish a summary of the report without naming names and specific salary regulations without the strictest confidentiality regulations.

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"As with the car toll, Minister Scheuer has no interest in clearing up irregularities at Autobahn GmbH," said Sven-Christian Kindler at WELT AM SONNTAG.

Andreas Scheuer stands for “maximum possible lack of transparency”.

The minister tried "to make the control of parliament more difficult", although there was "absolutely nothing to keep secret" in this state-owned GmbH.

This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

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Source: Welt am Sonntag