[DW] Natural gas has stopped flowing from Russia to Germany. But many questions remain on how much influence the Kremlin had on Berlin through the Nord Stream pipeline.
It seems like a scene from a crime movie, but it happened in northeastern Germany in the spring of 2022: A tax official found tax documents relating to a gift of €20 million ($21 million) from Russia to a German climate foundation. The documents had been urgently sought in her office, but no one could find them. Instead of handing them in, the official took the files home and burned them in her fireplace.
What went up in flames were documents from the Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation in on the Baltic Sea, the endpoint of two Russian gas pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, that would be damaged by explosions in the fall of 2022. |