The State Chancellery of Lower Saxony's Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) provided information on questions from the opposition FDP on the "Moscow Connection" in Hanover on Friday.

Head of the State Chancellery Jörg Mielke presented a 17-page statement to the state parliament's economic committee, which primarily dealt with Prime Minister Weil's contacts with Gerhard Schröder and his confidante Heino Wiese.

Wiese has a consulting company with a focus on Russia and became Russian honorary consul in Hanover in 2016.

Mielke said in the state parliament that with Honorary Consul Wiese there had "always been a certain reluctance on the part of the State Chancellery" because he "also ran an agency that focused on the economic exploitation of precisely these contacts" with politicians.

Reinhard Bingener

Political correspondent for Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen based in Hanover.

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Prior to Wiese's appointment as Honorary Consul, Prime Minister Weil appeared as a speaker in 2014 at a discussion group in a posh hotel in Hanover and in 2015 at an evening salon in Hanover, both events were organized by Wiese's consulting firm.

When asked whether the guests had to pay money to the company for their participation, the state government again gave no answer on Friday.

Wiese donated EUR 13,500 to the SPD in 2015 alone and another EUR 14,000 through his company in 2016, EUR 10,000 of which went directly to the Lower Saxony state association, of which Weil is the chairman.

The FDP parliamentary group leader Stefan Birkner said that if money was asked to take part in the events, it would be “a big problem for Weil”.

Birkner recalled the so-called "Meet Rüttgers affair",

which caused a stir in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2010.

At the request of the FAZ, the consulting firm "Wiese Consult" did not provide any specific information about the two dates and wrote in general that such formats were "mostly financed by participant contributions, sponsors, cooperation" or "own marketing funds".

Only once were members of the opposition hit

The committee meeting on Friday also dealt with Weil's trips to Russia.

After taking office in 2013, the prime minister made four official trips to Russia, more than any other country.

When asked by the FDP what contacts the SPD politician had with human rights groups there, his head of state chancellery replied on Friday that there had been a meeting with critical representatives of civil society during the first trip to Russia in 2013.

The meeting took place in the Moscow office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

During the trips in 2015, 2016 and 2018, there were no more such meetings, although the pressure on opposition figures in Russia increased after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

FDP parliamentary group leader Birkner has now called on the SPD in Lower Saxony to also create transparency for donations by people close to Russia below the threshold of 10,000 euros.

Since the state government does not provide any information on this, the party must also disclose what the talks with Gerhard Schröder were about, which Weil did not hold in his capacity as head of government, but as an SPD politician.