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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, NOVE�IBER 30, 1984
PAGE 11
opening the way for Mr. Kohl to eventually try for the chancel
lorship. Mr. Kohl and Mr. Barzel have denied the allegation••.•
The magazine reported that Mr. Kohl's name repeatedly appeared on
a list of "unofficial payments to the Christian Democratic Union"
by Rudolf Diehl, who was Flick's chief accountant at the time.
As quoted by the magazine, the entries on the purported lists did
not say that the payments were made to Mr. Kohl but "because of"
Mr. Kohl, apparently implying that they were made as goodwill
gestures to him.
According to the magazine, Mr. Diehl's accounts also listed
950,000 DM in payments to foundations and other institutions "be
cause of" Franz Josef Strauss, the premier of Bavaria, and a com
parable amount to foundations supported by Foreign Minister Hans
Dietrich Genscher. All the payments were in the late 1970s, the
magazine claimed.
Just what is the Friedrich Flick conglomerate?
Another INTERNATIONAL
HERALD TRIBUNE article, this time in the October 30 issue, is headlined
"Only BJsiness for Germany's Flick Is the Business of Owning Businesses."
The huge holding company, it is interesting to note, was founded by Fried
rich Flick, a major bankroller of the Nazi party.
The Friedrich Flick group.•.is a wealthy, sprawling empire with
interests in almost every major aspect of industry. With re
ported world revenue of nearly 10 billion Deutsche marks ($3.3
billion) and a workforce of 42,500, the giant holding company
formally known as Friedrick F1ick Industrieverwaltung KGaA is
West Germany's largest family-held industrial enterprise.
But unlike Siemens AG, Daimler-Benz AG and other manufacturing
stalwarts of the West German economy whose market power is
visible daily through myriad products bearing their label, Flick
has no business of its own other than the business of ownership.
And it is this business--buying and selling stakes in industrial
companies--that is the root of Flick's troubles and the accusa
tions that it used bribes in the mid-1970s to elicit favorable
government tax treatment •.••
Specifically, the company's tax-evasion imbrog1io, dubbed the
"Flick Affair," dates back to 1975 when it netted just under 1.9
billion DM from the sale of a 27 percent stake in Daimler-Benz to
Deutsche Bank.
State investigators say that in an effort to
avoid having to pay large capital gains taxes on that profit,
Flick's management, then [under former deputy chairman Eberhard]
von Brauchitsch, bribed high-placed Bonn officials to obtain an
800-million-DM tax exemption•...
Last year, Flick was ranked as the 26th-largest of all West Ger
man companies.•.. But the real potential of today's Flick group
and its management is not to be gauged so much by its ranking on
charts as it is by the breadth of its industrial activities, in
cluding tanks, paper, chemicals, machinery and steel •.•.