The dispute over the clarification of the car toll fiasco by the Bundestag has intensified. According to information from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (“SZ”, Monday edition), Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) is blocking the work of a special investigator appointed by the opposition. The lawyer Jerzy Montag should therefore clarify whether Scheuer’s MP e-mail account had been used as a secret communication channel for the toll. However, Scheuer withdrew the special agent’s permission to examine.
The SZ wrote that the search for potentially important e-mails before Scheuer’s repeated interrogation by the Bundestag’s investigative committee, which was planned for this Thursday, was canceled.
According to the newspaper, the Ministry of Transport had announced that Scheuer had “postponed” his consent to viewing the e-mails. As a justification, the ministry said that a decision by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) on a lawsuit by the opposition should be awaited.
In the lawsuit, the opposition demands the submission of log files from Scheuer’s e-mail account in the Bundestag. Because of the lawsuit, the ministry had to stop the “workflow” that had already been organized “in detail” with the special investigator, said a ministry spokeswoman for the “SZ”.
The FDP accuses Scheuer of a lack of willingness to provide information. “Scheuer has promised complete transparency. He is now withdrawing them with flimsy arguments, ”said the FDP chairman in the U Committee, Christian Jung, of the“ SZ ”. He accused Scheuer of “secrecy”: “We suspect that he is holding back documents that he should have made available to us.”
The committee of inquiry is trying to clarify the events surrounding the failed car toll. Scheuer had already signed contracts to collect the toll at the end of 2018, before there was final legal certainty about the former CSU prestige project. In June 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) then overturned the toll plans.
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