By IRNA,
Berlin : The German Parliament has imposed a 1.2 million euro fine against the Christian Democratic party (CDU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel in the wake of a funding fraud, Parliamet President Norbert Lammert announced Thursday.
The CDU must pay this fine because party members have admitted to ‘illegal party donations’ ahead of the last state election campaign in 2006.
Around 385,000 euros (508,000 dollars) of taxpayer funding for the state’s CDU was channelled to a Duesseldorf-based consultant firm at the time of the 2006 election campaign.
The party was adamant at the time that this payment was in return for legitimate advice.
On Monday, however, the state’s CDU leader Josef Rosenbaumer rejected the earlier claims amid ongoing legal investigations into the payment.
The CDU has repeatedly been embroiled in the past in a series of financial scandals over illict party donations.
The Christian Democrats were also involved in Germany’s biggest political corruption scandal since the second World War in the late 1990s after former chancellor Helmut Kohl admitted to having kept secret party accounts throughout his time as party leader in violation of the country’s party-financing law.