Prosecutor General is said to have saved Hamburg's Interior Senator Grote from raids

A reception because of his reappointment as a senator in the middle of the Corona ban phase for meetings of this kind, a raid on a hamburger because of a Twitter post ("Andy, you are so 1pimmel"), the debate about the repeated acceptance of tickets for a box at games played by his favorite club FC St. Pauli – for a senator of the interior, Andy Grote (SPD) has quite often moved between the tension between standard-compliant official conduct and possibly justiciable misconduct in recent years. And although the allegations about ticketing have been known since 2019 - Grote had explained his visits with an official background - this case is now boiling up again. Hamburg's Attorney General Jörg Fröhlich also came into focus.

Several media reported on Friday about a kind of consultation between Attorney General Fröhlich and prosecutors from the responsible corruption prosecutor's office, which was investigating in this case because of taking advantage of the office. In addition to Grote, it was also about invitations for police chief Ralf Martin Meyer and the then Senator for Economics Frank Horch (independent), who both accepted and also explained that they had professional motives. Grote himself was not yet interior and sports senator in the examined period of 2015, but head of the central district office.

The Internet portal t-online quotes from internal memos of this meeting of the public prosecutors, some of whom spoke out in favor of a search of the three people. Otherwise one would expose oneself to the accusation of granting a “celebrity bonus”. Prosecutor General Fröhlich, on the other hand, spoke according to the note of a "leeway for assessment" in favor of those affected, which could be exploited here. And, it is reported, he also had an eye on the upcoming state elections in February 2020. At the meeting, he is said to have said that "an escalation before the election" must be prevented, otherwise there would be "a political tsunami". Fröhlich himself apparently did not think much of Grote, so t-online quotes him from the note with the sentence that he "does not think Grote has integrity". A search finally only took place in the office of FC St. Pauli, and the proceedings were discontinued.

However, the situation was different for two officials from the finance department, who had also accepted cards of a lower value. They were professionally entrusted with tax processes relating to the association and finally ended up in court, a few weeks ago they were sentenced to pay a fine.

The Hamburg Interior Authority declined to comment on the note because it was not known there. When asked by WELT AM SONNTAG about the process, the judicial authority stated that it had not become aware of any new allegations, but that it had now "requested a report on the facts described from the General Public Prosecutor's Office as part of its official and technical supervision". She was informed about the earlier hiring in the form of the reporting system, but the decisions "on the implementation of specific investigative measures are in principle not the subject of the reporting system" - that was also the case in this case.

In Hamburg politics, on the other hand, the new allegations are causing a stir. CDU parliamentary group leader Dennis Thering recalled on Friday at the request of this newspaper that Hamburg's mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) had held on to Grote several times despite allegations. "The scandals surrounding Interior Senator Grote are becoming more and more of a burden for the entire Hamburg Senate," he says. This process, which has now become known, is now “indeed a political tsunami for Tschentscher and his entire Senate. I expect Mayor Tschentscher and his Senator for Justice to provide a complete explanation of the thwarting of a criminal investigation by the Attorney General.

The left also calls on Grote to provide clarification – otherwise consequences would have to be drawn. Deniz Celik, the parliamentary group's domestic policy spokesman, said: "Andy Grote again. And again it comes to the question of whether the interior senator is possibly above the law. The new allegations weigh heavily and urgently need to be clarified.” The AfD immediately related the matter to Mayor Tschentscher: “If he doesn’t react again, it appears that Grote has freedom of fools in the Senate,” it said.