Former CSU parliamentary group member Alfred Sauter has leveled serious accusations against the State Prosecutor’s Office and the Bavarian state government. Speaking to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ), Sauter stated that despite lacking an initial suspicion to justify any investigation, the State Prosecutor’s Office nevertheless staged raids in the Chancellery and five other locations involving over 50 people and the media. He criticized the official explanation for the raids and the freezing of his accounts-that the criminal code allegedly should have contained something else, and the investigation was based on what “should” have been there. Sauter contended that this amounted to a constitutional breach, implying the State Prosecutor’s Office had encroached on the powers of the legislature.
Sauter also criticized his party colleagues for how they handled the situation. He noted that CSU Chairman Markus Söder had effectively abandoned him. He expressed surprise, recalling previous messages from Söder where the chairman had thanked him via text for his offer to procure masks, saying something along the lines of, “I will never forget this. In a positive sense, mind you”. According to Sauter, former party leader Franz Josef Strauß would have handled the matter differently: “He would have worked out a solution that preserved reputations. I am not so sure about Stoiber, but I think even he would have considered how to resolve this differently”.
When asked what Söder specifically could have done, Sauter replied to the FAZ that Söder “could have said: ‘Alfred also contributed to me being able to save so many lives.'” Furthermore, Sauter questioned why the Free State government itself did not procure the masks, pointing out that the state maintains several liaison offices in China.
It is background context that during the pandemic, Sauter had offered the state government to procure masks from China. He received €1.243 million in brokerage commissions through a company owned by his children, which, he claims, he donated before his case became public. During the scandal, Sauter was pressured out of the parliamentary faction, with moral reasons cited for this action. Notably, courts, including the Federal Court of Justice, have cleared him of charges related to the bribery and corruption of members of parliament.