In Berlin, the district mayor of Berlin Mitte, Stephan von Dassel, is said to have tried to use private money to avert the lawsuit of an unsuccessful applicant. Previously, he had given a senior position to a Green politician who supported him.
According to media reports, the Greens politician and district mayor Stephan von Dassel offered money to a rejected applicant so that he would not sue the district of Berlin-Mitte. In doing so, he may have violated the law.
Background: The case concerns the filling of the position of head of the control office in the Berlin Mitte district office. This was awarded to a member of the Green district board, who supported von Dassel in the election campaign. The unsuccessful applicant wanted to sue against this decision.
In the hope that he would refrain from doing so, von Dassel is said to have offered him money privately. According to the ” Tagesspiegel “, there are text messages that Dassel is said to have sent to the plaintiff, which shows this.
It says: An out-of-court settlement with the district office is not possible for budgetary reasons. “I could therefore imagine a private-law agreement between us, because I finally want to complete the process,” said von Dassel in the message.
Von Dassel is said to have offered the plaintiff 18,700 euros. He accepted the offer. Only when von Dassel is said to have stopped responding to messages did there seem to be discrepancies.
The recruitment process for the position was then reopened and the two candidates were again invited to an interview on August 1st.
The district office confirmed to the “Tagesspiegel” that in the case both a “public-law and a private-law out-of-court settlement had been examined and rejected”. Should it prove to be the case that the attempted agreement went like this, von Dassel tried “to intervene in a procedure using inappropriate means,” according to the Graf von Westphalen law firm.
The parties have already responded to the incident. In a joint press release, the parliamentary groups of the CDU and FDP write: “I can’t imagine any objective reason why a district mayor would offer such an amount of private money in order to complete a recruitment process for the district office.”
Sharp criticism also came from the LEFT. Sven Diedrich told the “Tagessspiegel”: “It would be a scandal for a district mayor to buy his employees with private money.”
