So the scandal came into being and began to gain strength, threatening today criminal liability for several far from minor employees of the German embassy in Ukraine, as well as the inglorious resignation of the German Foreign Minister, Vice-Chancellor Joschka Fischer.
Actually, the whole story revolves around so-called tourist visas - a subject, to put it mildly, not the most interesting: bureaucratic papers, nothing more. However, these papers were enough to throw the highest political circles into extreme anxiety. Today we are talking about possible corruption, about alleged perjury by high-ranking Berlin officials, even about trust in the entire federal government.
As reported by IA Rosbalt, last week the 9th Grand Criminal Chamber of the Cologne Regional Court sentenced 39-year-old mathematician Anatoly B. to five years in prison: for organizing a gang that brought illegal immigrants to Germany from Ukraine, Russia and several other countries of the former USSR. The presiding judge Ulrich Höppner emphasized that "in fact, a sentence of eight to nine years would have been more appropriate," however the court was forced to give the defendant a "discount" - since the reason for the crime was the "flagrant errors" of the German Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry.