Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) has "temporarily suspended all its activities with a view to the planned digital media house in Berlin".

The broadcaster announced this on Monday evening.

"In light of the allegations leveled against me personally and the broadcaster, we have committed ourselves to full clarification.

For us, this means not continuing any processes whose proper start is currently being publicly questioned," said RBB director Patricia Schlesinger.

"In order to ensure clarity here, the management decided today to temporarily interrupt the planning and implementation work for the digital media house.

We will wait until the allegations have been fully clarified before taking any new steps.

Everyone should be sure that they are participating in a project that has been set up correctly without a doubt."

In the coming days, the broadcaster will inform everyone involved in the construction about this step and discuss how the interruption in the project can be implemented without permanent damage to the overall project.

The Brandenburg state parliament will also deal with the allegations of nepotism, which are being leveled against the director Patricia Schlesinger and the head of the RBB administrative board, Wolf-Dieter Wolf, on Tuesday.

The main committee of the state parliament meets at the request of the AfD parliamentary group for a special session.

The director, Friederike von Kirchbach, chair of the broadcasting council, and Wolf-Dieter Wolf, head of the administrative board, are to comment on the agenda item “consulting contracts and expenses affair in connection with the RBB director and ARD boss Patricia Schlesinger”.

As the "Tagesspiegel" reports, Schlesinger will not appear in person, but has sent a statement.

Various allegations have been made against Wolf and the director Schlesinger.

In particular, this involves the planning of the Digital Media House (DMH), which is to be built by 2026.

Here it is said that various contracts with consultants have come about in a questionable way.

A real estate consultant who allegedly made the highest bid is said to have received an order without a tender, and an award procedure is said to have been canceled for unclear reasons.

According to information first revealed by the Business Insider specialist service, the consultant then received an order from the RBB subsidiary RBB Media.

The real estate entrepreneur Wolf is also blamed for providing Patricia Schlesinger's husband with a consulting contract worth 140,000 euros in his capacity as chairman of the supervisory board of Messe Berlin.

At the end of 2020, Wolf, in his capacity as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Messe Berlin, campaigned for Schlesinger's husband, the journalist Gerhard Spörl, to receive a consulting contract.

Wolf, he announced to the financial director of the trade fair that Spröl would make an offer.

As a result, Joruanlsuiet received a direct order for media coaching for EUR 72,000.

Another allegation is that there were inconsistencies in the billing of business meals in the director's private rooms.

The core of the allegations is that Wolf does not fill his various offices in accordance with the compliance rules.

The astonishing increase in the salary of the RBB director was also noticed.

Your annual salary rose from 2020 to 2021 by sixteen percent to 303,000 euros, approved by the station's board of directors.

It should be taken into account here that "this agreement should be related to your contract term, which is longer than a classic collective agreement," said the RBB on request.

The broadcaster had rejected the allegations in connection with the planning of the digital media house in the past few days on request in all points.

The contracts were awarded correctly, the contract that the mentioned real estate consultant received from the subsidiary RBB Media was not about the digital media house.

The expense accounts for the director's evening invitations had an official reason.

However, when asked further, the broadcaster admitted that Wolf knew the consultant in question very well before he worked for RBB and even recommended him to the broadcaster.

At first it was said that the consultant first had business relationships with the broadcaster.

As announced after an extraordinary meeting of the Broadcasting Council last Friday, the head of the board of directors, Wolf, is temporarily on hold until the allegations have been clarified.

He was taking this step "to avoid any appearance of influencing the full clarification of the allegations," said the Broadcasting Council.

The committee, which initially did not get involved, announced that they insisted "on a complete clarification of the allegations made against the RBB director Patricia Schlesinger and the broadcaster".

RBB has turned on its compliance officer and the broadcaster's audit department.

This brought in a Hamburg law firm.

One is "confident of being able to clear up the allegations," according to the RBB.