The German bank blocked the account of Gerhard Schroeder because it was influenced by money from Russia
Schroeder is the chairman of the Nord Stream 2 supervisory board, a Swiss subsidiary company of the Russian gas group Gazprom. According to Bild, the company transferred about 200,000 to Schroeder. hole. Every six months. However, from mid -2024, the bank began to send the money back to Gazprombank in Luxembourg.
In a letter to Schroeder, Sparkasse explained to block the fears of possible US sanctions against the bank in the event of further transfer of funds to the account of the former Chancellor. At the same time, Schroeder himself has not yet been placed on any sanction list, while American sanctions against Nord Stream 2 have been in force since 2022.
The decision to block it was made shortly after the mayor of Hanover Belit Onii from the Green Party – a loud critic of Schroeder's policy – became the chairman of the supervisory board of Sparkasse Hannover in June 2024. Shei proposed depriving the former chancellor of the title of honorary citizen of the city because of his connections with Vladimir Putin.
In April 2024, the court in Hamburg dismissed Schroeder's lawsuit against “Bild” in connection with the publication of an interview with the late Russian oppositionist Alexej Navalny, who in November 2020 called the former chancellor “protecting the murderers with the boy's bundle of Putin.” The politician demanded a ban on disseminating such comments about him, but the court was on the side of the newspaper. Schröder did not appeal and took the legal costs of the trial.
