Canada extradites German businessman Schreiber

[August 03, 2009]  MUNICH (AP) -- Karlheinz Schreiber, a key figure in a political party financing scandal involving former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was extradited to Germany from Canada on Monday after losing a decade-long court battle.

The 75-year-old former arms-industry lobbyist landed in Munich around 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT, 3:30 a.m. EDT), then was taken to a jail in nearby Augsburg, where prosecutors accuse him of bribery and tax evasion.

Officials will read Schreiber the arrest warrant against him on Tuesday and then bring him before a judge, who will decide whether to keep him in custody pending formal charges, Augsburg state court spokesman Karl-Heinz Haeusler said.

Schreiber, a dual German and Canadian citizen, was arrested in Canada in 1999 under a German warrant. He maintains the charges against him and his extradition from Canada are politically driven.

Allegations that Schreiber gave a cash donation in 1991 to the former treasurer of Kohl's Christian Democratic Union party, Walther Leisler Kiep, triggered a scandal that only deepened with Kohl's 1999 admission that he had personally accepted off-the-books -- and therefore illegal -- donations from supporters.

Kohl was Germany's chancellor from 1982 to 1998.

The conservative CDU currently heads Germany's governing coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel, who won the party leadership in 2000 after becoming one of the first in her party to break with Kohl over the scandal.

Polls show the CDU with a strong lead in polls before Germany's Sept. 27 elections, and Schreiber's reappearance did not immediately appear likely to have a major impact on that election.

"I think the CDU donations affair from back then won't have any real significance for the election campaign -- it's too far back," Max Stadler, a lawmaker for the opposition Free Democrats, told Deutschlandfunk radio.

Prosecutors have accused Schreiber and others of creaming off undeclared commissions from a deal in the early 1990s to deliver Fuchs armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

Schreiber also has been accused of paying 3.8 million marks ($2.8 million) to Holger Pfahls, then a top official in the German Defense Ministry, in connection with arms contracts.

Schreiber has also been associated with a separate Canadian political scandal.

Public hearings on Schreiber's controversial financial dealings with former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney drew to a close last week. Mulroney has denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with Schreiber, who claims the Canadian leader agreed to take money from him while still in office.

Mulroney acknowledges he accepted money from Schreiber in exchange for promoting a project involving a light armored vehicle factory on behalf of Germany's Thyssen AG, but only after leaving politics.

German government spokesman Klaus Vater said Schreiber had sent Merkel a letter asking her to intervene in his case. He said it had arrived too late to be evaluated, and that "she wouldn't have done it anyway."

Justice Ministry spokesman Ulrich Staudigl dismissed as "pure invention" suggestions that Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries -- a center-left Social Democrat -- had political motives in calling for Schreiber's extradition.

[Associated Press; By CHRISTOF RUEHRMAIR]

Associated Press writers Maria Marquart in Munich and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

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