22-09-2021
Election frontrunner under scrutiny over issues opponents hope will cast finance minister in unflattering light.
Olaf Scholz, the frontrunner to succeed Angela Merkel in this month’s German election, is to be questioned by MPs about a money-laundering scandal as rivals sniff an opportunity to chip away at the Social Democrat’s commanding lead in the polls.
Scholz, whose SPD is currently well ahead of the centre-right CDU/CSU with the Greens in third place and the liberal Free Democrats in fourth, will appear before the Bundestag finance committee on September 20, just days before the election a week on Sunday.
In recent days the CDU/CSU has opened up a new front in its campaign to halt the Social Democrats’ rise. Party leaders have focused on three scandals that cast an unflattering light on Scholz, Germany’s finance minister and deputy chancellor — the collapse of disgraced payment company Wirecard, the cum-ex tax fraud and irregularities at the Financial Intelligence Unit, Germany’s main anti-money laundering agency.
Click here to read the full article