Philipp Amthor near Lanz: That was my biggest political mistake

Dear readers,

As a word, the Freedom of Information Act (IFG) is not just a good choice for the next round Sharade, it is actually an important pillar of German democracy. In a nutshell, every citizen offers it access to official information if they are not under special protection.

The Union would like to abolish or reform the IFG in its current form, as it is officially called. From the perspective of politicians, the wish is not that surprising. The IFG is also used by journalists who have been able to uncover scandals from time to time in the past, in which politicians were also involved.

At the CDU, Philipp Amthor leads the working group that deals with the IFG and is part of the coalition negotiations. That has a taste. Because Amthor is one of these politicians who stumbled across the IFG. And now he was asked about it at “Markus Lanz”.

Have a nice day!

In 2020, it became known that Philipp Amthor, as a member of the Bundestag with a letter to the then Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier, turned to request political support for the US start-up Augustus Intelligence. In return, Amthor received a place on the company’s supervisory board and stock options of the company – classic lobbying.

The whole thing became public by an inquiry according to the IFG. Amthor had not committed a criminal offense to use his political connections for private interests, but was not well received in Berlin. It was massive to his image.

So the relationship between him and the IFG is not the best. But he doesn’t want to abolish it, he emphasized at Lanz.

The moderator also found the constellation Amthor/IFG a little suspicious and pierced from time to time how it was put together with the lobbyism affair. Amthor was very repentant: “That was my biggest political mistake.”

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With material from the agencies.