The public prosecutor in Frankfurt, Germany announced that two members of Germany’s governing parties will finally be investigated for allegedly taking bribes in exchange for helping whitewash the reputation of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian government.

Karin Strenz and Eduard Lintner are being probed over their role in the Azerbaijani Laundromat scandal exposed by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in September 2017.

Transparency Germany submitted a criminal complaint about the German politicians, which one of them dubbed a “PR comedy”.

In September 2017, it became public that the authoritarian regime of Azerbaijan created a network in which 2.5 billion Euros flowed through banks and shell companies, with bribes paid to political decision-makers across Europe. Karin Strenz is said to have received money from Azerbaijani sources as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) – officially in the form of consultancy contracts with Eduard Lintner's company. During her time at PACE, she participated in election observation missions in Azerbaijan, led a delegation tour of German MPs and was involved in PACE votes on politics in the country, in most of which she held a pro-Azerbaijan position.

The Frankfurt prosecutor accuses Karin Strenz of “pro-Azerbaijani” behaviour and collection of at least 22,000 Euros in bribes. Former PACE member Eduard Lintner is accused of having received funds from Azerbaijan in the amount of around 4 million Euros through British shell companies between 2008 and 2016, in order to pass them on to members of PACE. In return, they are said to have expressed positive opinions about the Azerbaijani government and deliberately spoken out against the release of political prisoners.

The public prosecutor's office in Rostock justified its decision not to initiate an investigation on the grounds that there were neither indications of an agreement according to Section 108e of the Criminal Code, nor an offence that meets the requirement of occuring “when exercising the mandate”.

Hartmut Bäumer, Chairman of Transparency Germany said: “It is time that the wrongdoing by Karin Strenz and Eduard Lintner is finally also prosecuted, after their right to access the Council of Europe was withdrawn for life. We are pleased that the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office assesses the situation differently than the Rostock public prosecutor's office."