After "Business Insider" and "Tagesspiegel" allegations were made public last week that the RBB director Patricia Schlesinger and the chairman of the RBB board of directors Wolf-Dieter Wolf were not so precise with the separation between private Business and the interests of their broadcaster, the RBB sees "the greatest possible transparency" as a "priority task" - although the allegations are a "mixture of assumptions, insinuations and wrong conclusions".

Axel Weidemann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Among other things, it is about the construction and the contracts of the new "digital media house" of the RBB, which is to be built by 2026.

The RBB leadership is said to have interrupted an award procedure in favor of an expert who was already acquainted with Wolf, who also served as the head of the supervisory board at Messe Berlin.

The RBB said last week: "According to everything we know, the consultants and Mr. Wolf only got to know each other through our project." According to "Business Insider", however, Wolf presented it in a non-public meeting of the RBB board of directors on Tuesday different there.

Accordingly, Wolf already knew the consultant before he placed him with the RBB.

When asked about this, the RBB said on Thursday: "Our finding that Mr. Wolf [the consultant] only met Mr. L. personally in the course of his work for rbb corresponded to our level of knowledge until the day before yesterday." Reviewing his calendar, found that there was indeed a meeting earlier in Mr. Branoner's office."

This, in turn, has only been known since the Board of Directors meeting on Tuesday.

It is now known that Wolf "met the consultant before recommending him to us".

The decisive factor is "that there were no business relationships" between Mr. L. and Mr. Wolf "at the time of the initial assignment by the RBB" and L. "was also not a consultant 'from Mr. Wolf's environment'".

With regard to the award procedure, the RBB repeats that "after a thorough examination of form and content" it came to the conclusion that the services offered from three existing offers "regardless of the respective costs were not suitable for the conditions" for the "advertised service fulfill".

Against this background, the awarding authority has decided to cancel the award procedure.

Meanwhile, the RBB wants to have the “entire complex checked again by an independent law firm”.

Then you will "certainly also have clarity about all questions relating to tenders and other awards to the consultants".