Former German Chancellor Schröder 'Debanked' Because Russia! Russia! Russia!

And thus freedom and liberty disappear, slowly at first, and then all of a sudden (hat/tip to Ernest Hemingway)

As Mr. Merz was frolicking with his fellow heads of gov’t in. Turku, Finland, his predecessor, Gerhard Schröder (in office 1998-2005) was ‘debanked’.

Yep, you read this correctly: Germany’s Tony Blair (not a compliment) lost his bank account at the Sparkasse Hannover—and he did so for the reasons that are, on the face of it, quite hard to discern (via Wikipedia):

He was chairman of the board at Nord Stream AG and at Rosneft but in 2022 resigned from chairmanship and paused his plans to join the board of Russian state-run gas company Gazprom. Nonetheless, he continues to be a member of the board at Rosneft. He also had roles as a global manager for investment bank Rothschild…

Given the current hysteria over Russia! Russia! Russia!, Mr. Schröder’s long-standing ties to Moscow are the proximate cause of this, albeit with a twist, and at this juncture, I’ll let BILD Zeitung (which broke the story two days ago) take you through what happened…

Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.

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Exclusive: Bank Returns Putin’s Money: Sparkasse [Hannover] Blocks Schröder’s Account from Receiving Russian Money [orig. Russen-Geld]

When it comes to money, Gerhard Schröder (81) likes it simple. No share transactions, no online banking. He gets his favourite—cash—directly from his savings bank, he said in an interview. The former German Chancellor has been a loyal customer there for more than 30 years, one of a total of 50 million across Germany. But now that good relationship is over.

By Jan C. Wehmeyer and Tanja May, BILD, 25 May 2025 [source; archived]

According to BILD research, Sparkasse Hannover has blocked his account for certain transfers. This means that payments that presumably originate from Schröder’s controversial Russian connections are no longer credited. As a result, the Genosse [trans. comrade] is missing out on almost half a million euros.

Background: just a few months after becoming Chancellor (1998 to 2005), Schröder became a lobbyist for his friend Vladimir Putin (72). To this day, Schröder is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nord Stream 2, a Swiss subsidiary of the Russian gas company Gazprom. According to Schröder, his role is to represent the company to the outside world and monitor management decisions [there’s so many red flags in this paragraph: Mr. Schröder’s friend is none other than Sauron, ahem, Mr. Putin; he lobbied for Nord Stream 1 and 2; and once he retired from public office, Mr. Schröder was appointed to the boards of various Russian oil and gas companies; while the latter is certainly many things, it’s not a crime in the technical sense of the criminal code; also, this was then, and now it is a crime™ in the sense of European elites wishing to replay (pick you favourite cartoon character from History™) either Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon, or Hitler].

According to information obtained by BILD, Nord Stream 2 transfers him an amount of around 200,000 euros every six months. The money usually flows to his hometown of Hanover via Luxembourg. But since mid-2024, Gerhard Schröder has not received a single rouble. BILD learned that, following an internal discussion, the savings bank blocked the account for Russian money, sending Putin’s cash back to Gazprombank in Luxembourg [this is such a shoddy paragraph: first, if it’s a bank transfer, it’s not ‘cash’ in the technical sense of the term; second, while I’m not privy to the payment details, I’m quite sure that whatever amount is eventually credited to Mr. Schröder’s account is denominated in euros, not in roubles; third, if the Luxembourg-based Gazprombank is a legitimate and legal business in a EU member-state (no less, lol), whatever the reasons for not following through with the wire transfer, it ain’t because the money stinks—but for political reasons].

In a letter, the Sparkasse Hannover informed Schröder of the reason for the blockade. In it, the management expressed its fear that US sanctions could hit the bank if it continued to credit Schröder’s account with the money [let that sink in for a moment: whatever one may think about Mr. Schröder, he hasn’t broken any laws and the money is a legitimate payment (for whatever services™ rendered), yet out of fear of future US sanctions, the Sparkasse refused to carry out the wire transfer: if you needed any more reminders of who is sovereign (the US) and who isn’t (Germany), there you go].

His good ties to Vladimir Putin (72) brought Schröder a fortune [this picture accompanies the piece; at no point it is mentioned that the main beneficiaries of the entire Nord Stream 1 and 2 policy were—German manufacturers and consumers whose energy bills were quite low; all of this is history now].

But is this justified? [this is among the most inane and stupid questions that the journos™ could have asked, and they did so anyways…] Schröder is still [sic] not on any sanctions list. US measures against Nord Stream 2 have been in place since 2022, so why did the savings bank suddenly decide to block the money last year? [ah, that’s a better question—here are my two cents: Mr. Schröder still wields some influence, and it may very well be that the current Merz-led gov’t collapses, either due to Russian actions or because they’re so immensely incompetent—and if that happens, a régime change in the sense of a reversal of policy vis-à-vis Moscow could plausibly happen: to me, the Sparkasse’s move is to anticipate that kind of change because Mr. Schröder has been quite vocal about peace with Russia and repeatedly offered his good offices in this regard].

In response to a BILD enquiry, a spokesperson for the bank said:

As a matter of principle, we do not comment publicly on customer relationships. I therefore ask for your understanding that we will not answer your questions [who spilled the beans to BILD, then?]

Coincidence or not? [lol, nope, there’s no way] Just a few weeks before the account blockade in June 2024, Hanover’s Mayor Belit Onay (44, Greens), a fierce critic of Schröder, took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sparkasse Hannover [sidenote: Sparkassen, or savings banks, are widely diffused across Central Europe since the 19th century (mainly because, unlike Britain and France, there was too little private capital available to industrialise, hence the traditionally much bigger role of the state in the economy east of the Rhine; I doubt it’s a coincidence that socialism arose in Central Europe, too)].

The new city hall boss wanted to strip Schröder of his honorary citizenship in 2022: ‘In view of the fact that Gerhard Schröder is not prepared to draw personal conclusions from the war in Ukraine [why should he? As a private citizen he’s entitled to the same civil liberties as anyone else, isn’t he?], it is only logical to end his honorary citizenship’, said Onay [not for a Green™ warmonger] at the time. Continued business connections between the former chancellor and the ‘warmonger’ Putin could not be reconciled with the city’s values [an indirect quote by Onay]. Schröder beat the city to it at the time and returned the honour himself [this is why I do consider Mr. Schröder as someone with a backbone while disagreeing with him on most policy issues].

So, was there a savings bank order from the town hall? When asked, the mayor’s spokesperson declined to comment [huhum, I suppose that the evidence of absence of a comment isn’t tantamount to the absence of evidence city hall interfered].

BILD learnt from banking circles that Schröder has not yet taken legal action against the savings bank. However, due to his large fortune, he should be able to do without the Nord Stream money for a while yet.

Since the end of his chancellorship in 2005, Schröder has actually collected tens of millions of euros through his activities for Russian state-owned companies. On top of this came consultancy fees, book income and speaker fees of up to 70,000 euros per stage appearance [in the end, BILD misses the point entirely].

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Bottom Lines: Bad Looks, Worse Implications

This is all very bad, and while my sympathies for the former chancellor of Germany are rather limited (at best), this kind of lawfare and (presumed) abuse of public offices for political warfare are but the precursor to violence on the streets.

If history is any guide (ahem), we note, in passing, Dirk Schumann’s excellent book Political Violence in Weimar Germany (Berghahn, 2009), which

refutes both the claim that the Bolshevik revolution was the prime cause of violence and the argument that the First World War’s all-encompassing “brutalization” doomed post-1918 German political life from the very beginning. The study thus contributes to a view of the Weimar Republic as a state in severe crisis but with alternatives to the Nazi takeover.

There’s not a great distance between the weaponisation of words morph into deeds motivated by political antagonism.

We note the dubious role of the Green™ mayor of Hannover in this charade, and Mr. Onay may very well be the proximate origin of this instance of lawfare. So, who is Belit Onay? Here’s what his German Wikipedia entry says (references omitted):

Onay was born in Goslar in 1981. His parents came to Germany as Turkish guest workers from Istanbul in the 1970s and ran a restaurant. He describes himself as a ‘liberal Muslim.’ He was politicised by the murder attack in Solingen in 1993, in which right-wing extremists set fire to a residential building and killed five people of Turkish origin. At the time, his parents were considering leaving Germany; he realised that ‘it matters where people come from and what they look like’. [imagine a right-wing™ politico would say something like that to immediately notice the bias of whoever curates Wikipedia].

A bit further down, we learn that Belit Onay was a card-carrying member of the SPD while in high school, ran for the conservative-in-name-only CDU as a student at the U of Hannover before, while working as a staffer for Green politico™ Filiz Polat (2008-13), Mr. Onay eventually joined the Green Party around 2010. Talk about a turncoat without any convictions (to be fair, I won’t hold his adolescent SPD membership against him, but I consider his trajectory as an adult telling enough: if the CDU thing doesn’t work out, why not join the Greens for personal gain?].

Should you, at this point, wonder about his track record since becoming Mayor of Hannover, well, here goes:

In March 2020, he campaigned for the admission of unaccompanied, underage children from Greek refugee camps [these refugees came mainly from Syria]. In October 2020, Onay attracted considerable criticism from all parties, the press, and social organisations when he referred to sufficient space in Hanover during a video conference with Chancellor Merkel and other city leaders on the admission of further refugees from Greece [same obfuscatory lingo: these were ‘boat people’ who ended up in Greece]. Almost at the same time, the city abrogated a pilot project to house homeless people despite the impending winter and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Left-wing humanitarianism™ proudly on display, I suppose. Mr. Onay did all this while presiding over a coalition gov’t with the SPD (no less), which the latter ended in November 2023—since then, Hannover’s Greens are governing without a majority in the city assembly.

This all looks supremely bad (or worse), yet it’s part and parcel of what’s perceived normal™ politicking these days.

Why Mr. Onay could simply refuse to comment on his possible role in this farce is beyond any self-respecting citizen. That he’s so far gotten away with this, well, tells you all there is to know about the power of the Greens in Germany (note that they are out of federal office at the moment).

With Russophobia rampant at this time, let’s not forget what this means: if there aren’t (yet) even US sanctions on Mr. Schröder but the Sparkasse Hannover did this anyways, just think about the implications: all of this happens ahead of the new EU watchdog against money laundering and terrorism financing AMLA being up and running:

EU Ends the Separation of Power by Creating a New 'Authority' to 'Combat Terrorism'

This reeks of the ill fate of those who, back in 2022, supported the Canadian Freedom Convoy by donating money and getting ‘debanked’ as a consequence.

If this stands, these kinds of political shenanigans will affect everyone.

Lest I forget, let’s teach you an apt German term to understand the Sparkasse Hannover’s action: vorauseilender Gehorsam, which I render into English as ‘anticipatory obedience’.

It simply (sic) means that the Sparkasse Hannover—which may have received an illegitimate order from the Mayor—may have acted because they anticipate sanctions to be forthcoming, and to please the masters, they went ahead without ever having been asked to do this.

Irrespective of the proximate cause—I do think this may have been done on Mr. Onay’s orders, which he surely received from somewhere or someone else—shame on them for doing this; if people permit this to stand, well, the next time this happens, don’t complain.

It’s as Mao once quipped: punish one, educate a hundred.

To wrap up this piece: isn’t it strange that the main beneficiaries of Mr. Schröder’s arrangements with Mr. Putin—German manufacturers and ordinary people living in Germany who received cheap Russian gas—are never mentioned?

This faux (a)morality charade will haunt everyone before too long, in particular because if they™ can get away with these kinds of shenanigans against someone as well-connected to both Moscow and the Rothschild banking empire, how do you gauge the odds of the likes of you and me?

As bad as all of this is, I consider this episode as proof-positive of the ongoing factional strife among the élite (of which Mr. Schröder appears to have been a member of the outer party). The likes of you and I are, as always when such things happen, collateral damage.