Nfter the searches by the public prosecutor’s office in Bochum at the headquarters of the real estate group Vonovia and other properties on suspicion of corruption by several employees, some of whom were former, demands for consequences for the group are being made by parts of the politicians.
“The fact that Vonovia presents itself as a victim after the incident is hypocritical,” Katrin Schmidberger, spokeswoman for housing for the Greens in Berlin, told WELT AM SONNTAG. For example, a “non-transparent network of subsidiaries” like that at Vonovia would “facilitate corruption and fraud in external procurement”.
Schmidberger calls on Vonovia to “completely” clarify the incidents. In addition, she demands that politicians have to “take tougher action” in order to oblige landlords like Vonovia to make ancillary costs transparent.
SPD member of the Bundestag Zanda Martens also calls on the group to use the raid “to finally make its billing practice more transparent”. She sees the tenants as the actual victims of the corruption case, “who had and still have to pay excessive operating and modernization costs because Vonovia did not adequately protect them from corrupt activities”.
She announces that she wants to follow closely “whether and – if so – what legislative need for action arises from the Vonovia situation”. Katrin Schmidberger also sees the “time to consider how profit-oriented companies can restrict access to the market”.