Germany’s interior minister will face a parliamentary committee on Wednesday to answer questions over her decision to fire the country’s cybersecurity chief over allegations he had ties to Russia.
Nancy Faeser will appear before an interior affairs select committee amid accusations the dismissal was unfounded.
Arne Schönbohm was sacked as president of the German federal office for information security, the BSI, after allegations arose last October that he had turned a blind eye to a firm with links to Russian security circles.
Before he led the BSI, Schönbohm was jointly responsible for founding a lobbying group registered as a voluntary association, the Cyber Security Council Germany.
At the time of the sacking, Faeser said Schönbohmhad been barred from his office with immediate effect as “necessary public trust in the neutrality and impartiality of his leadership as president of the most important German cybersecurity agency has been damaged”.
Schönbohm has denied the accusations and has taken legal action against his dismissal in which he is demanding compensation.
The allegations emerged after Jan Böhmermann, a German TV satirist, featured Schönbohm’s links to a Russian company in a previous role.
The revelations have raised questions about a leading administrator’s judgment at a time when apprehension is rife over the exposure of Germany’s critical infrastructure to potential outside interference, not least due to the country’s previous dependence on Russia for oil and gas.
Faeser has defended her decision. She has the backing of her Social Democrats party, which has accused the opposition Christian Democrats of trying to make political hay before regional elections in the state of Hesse, in which Faeser is standing as the SPD’s lead candidate.
Wednesday’s session of the committee will ask Faeser to produce concrete evidence to show why she dismissed Schönbohm. She is also expected to be questioned over allegations that she used the domestic intelligence agency to gather information about the former BSI chief.
The CDU has expressed its “considerable doubt” that Faeser had reason to sack Schönbohm, referring to “contradictions by the minister … in her depiction of the events to date”.
Faeser has repeatedly rejected the accusations, referring to “sound and fury” created by the opposition because she is the leading candidate in the Hesse election.
She has rejected claims that it was Böhmermann’s TV programme that gave her the impulse to sack Schönbohm. “The decision was not made hastily but rigorously,” she told the weekly Wochentaz.
Faeser is due to answer MPs’ questions in the Bundestag after her committee appearance. Issues around asylum and migration policy are expected to be high on the agenda as well as what is being referred to in political circles as “Causa Schönbohm”.
