The former German chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl: not suspected of benefiting personally from cash donations he accepted. AP
Dr Kohl has admitted accepting almost £1 million from donors between 1993 and 1998
`I have never taken money for myself, nothing has ever gone into my personal, private account'
When Ireland provided the focal theme of the Frankfurt Book Fair three years ago, Dr Helmut Kohl made a speech about links between Germany and the Irish from earliest times to the present.
He spoke eloquently about the Irish monks who brought Christianity to Germany in the Middle Ages and praised Ireland's commitment to the EU.
He made a last-minute change to the text, however, omitting a brief passage praising the role of Mr Charles J Haughey in support of German unification. Although the scandal surrounding Mr Haughey's finances had not yet broken, Dr Kohl's advisers apparently felt that the former Taoiseach's reputation was already too dubious to allow his name to be linked with that of the chancellor of German unity.
As Dr Kohl prepares to face a criminal investigation into secret payments he received during his 16 years in office, he might spare a thought for his former friend.
Unlike Mr Haughey, the former chancellor is not suspected of benefiting personally from the cash donations he accepted. But he faces the same prospect of a lifetime of political achievement being overshadowed by allegations of corruption and illegality.
Prosecutors confirmed yesterday that they are starting a full-scale criminal investigation into whether Dr Kohl broke the law in channelling funds through a network of secret accounts.
"After examining the available sources of information, there is sufficient suspicion that there was embezzlement that damaged the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)," the Bonn prosecutor's office said in a statement.
The prosecutors first informed parliament because, as a member of the Bundestag, Dr Kohl enjoys immunity from prosecution. If the criminal investigation leads to charges, parliament will have to lift that immunity before those charges are pressed.
The President of the Bundestag, Mr Wolfgang Thierse, has the power to halt the investigation immediately but he made clear yesterday that he does not intend to intervene.
"This whole affair is a deep scar in German history. It is an outrage that a German chancellor is forced to admit that he violated party laws and the constitution and his oath of office," he said.
Dr Kohl has admitted accepting almost £1 million in cash from anonymous donors between 1993 and 1998 and channelling the funds to local Christian Democrat organisations through secret accounts. German law requires political parties to identify donors of sums greater than DM20,000 (£8,000) and the CDU could face heavy fines for its failure to do so. The party has also lost out on matching funds from the state worth 50 per cent of every private donation it receives.
"I could never be bribed. I have never taken money for myself, nothing has ever gone into my personal, private account. I was party chairman for 25 years, unpaid, without compensation," Dr Kohl said earlier this month.
Most Germans believe the former chancellor when he says that he did not take any money for himself and many agree with him when he claims that the scandal is being blown up out of proportion.
Dr Kohl insists that no government decisions were influenced by donations to party funds but he has refused to identify the donors on the grounds that he promised to keep their names secret.
Questions surround a DM1 million (£400,000) cash payment from an arms dealer that may have been linked to the government's approval of a lucrative arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Another large donation came from a property company that bought privatised housing at DM1 billion less than the price offered by the highest bidder.
The scandal has revived interest in the controversial sale of an eastern German oil refinery to the French oil company, Elf Aquitaine, in the early 1990s. The government confirmed recently that important files relating to the sale have disappeared from the chancellery.
Christian Democrat parliamentarians report that grassroots opinion within the party is firmly behind Dr Kohl and few among the present leadership are prepared to criticise their former leader. But as the party slides in opinion polls and watches electoral gains made this year evaporate, younger Christian Demo crats fear that Dr Kohl may be about to destroy the party he led for a quarter of a century.
The party leader, Dr Wolfgang Schauble, has attempted to perform a delicate balancing act, urging the former chancellor to come clean but stopping short of any public criticism of his old boss. Dr Schauble has failed to emerge from Dr Kohl's shadow since taking over the leadership last year and some colleagues fear that he lacks the personal authority to stand up to the man who has long been his political godfather.
It has been left to CDU general secretary, Dr Angela Merkel (45), a former physicist and daughter of an East German pastor, to play Cordelia to Dr Kohl's Lear, spelling out the truth that others feared to utter. In an open letter to Dr Kohl in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung before Christmas, Dr Merkel urged him to put the interests of the party first by breaking his silence over the secret donors. She went on to declare that the Kohl era was over and called on Christian Democrats to look ahead to a fresh political landscape without him.
Dr Kohl's allies rounded furiously on the general secretary, accusing her of using her former patron's misfortunes to advance her own career. Some even claimed that Dr Merkel's letter provided prosecutors with the evidence they needed to start criminal proceedings against Dr Kohl - a charge prosecutors have denied.
Senior party figures such as the former defence minister, Mr Volker Ruhe, have made ritual displays of loyalty to Dr Kohl but the former chancellor has been quietly dropped from next month's election campaign in the northern state of Schleswig Holstein.
While the CDU suffers, the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder has been enjoying a second honeymoon with voters as he introduces popular tax measures and appears to have taken control of his government at last. The centre-left coalition's teething troubles are almost forgotten and, now that the former finance minister, Mr Oskar Lafontaine, has vanished into bitter oblivion, Mr Schroder has no rivals within the cabinet.
With a massive package of spending cuts already approved by parliament, the chancellor is about to announce a raft of popular new initiatives, including a resolution of a dispute with power companies over how soon Germany can close all its nuclear power stations.
Apart from the criminal investigation announced yesterday, Dr Kohl faces a parliamentary inquiry into his activities that could last up to two years. Some Christian Democrats fear that the emotional argument within the party over Dr Kohl's legacy could lead to a full-scale split.
But Dr Merkel insists that the party's future is, as so often before, in the hands of the old patriarch whose vanity appears to have got the better of his judgment.
"Nobody in the party wants a split, we want unity. If Helmut Kohl would name the donors or the donors themselves would release him from his word of honour, we would have the solution to the problem," she said.