Messe Berlin: Husband of ARD boss received lucrative consulting contract
According to research by Business Insider, disputes within the Berlin trade fair company have turned into a media affair.
During compliance investigations, the investigators came across a lucrative consultancy contract between Messe Berlin and Gerhard Spörl, the husband of Patricia Schlesinger, the director of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB). Since January she has also been chairwoman of ARD.
After several participants, the order was initiated by Wolf-Dieter Wolf, head of the trade fair supervisory board. However, the man still has an interesting post: Wolf is head of the RBB board of directors and thus Schlesinger’s top supervisor.
ARD boss Patricia Schlesinger is a fervent advocate of the free press. “You can’t appreciate that highly enough,” emphasized the director of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) again recently. For many years, Schlesinger himself uncovered grievances for the ARD magazine “Panorama” and moderated “Brennpunkt” programs on the first. According to research by Business Insider, the prominent media manager is now being sucked into an affair that is taking place just a few hundred meters away from the RBB headquarters.
A dispute has been raging at the state-owned trade fair company in Berlin for months. It’s about cliques, vanity and the future of the International Consumer Electronics Fair (IFA). It is uncertain whether the trade fair with the highest turnover will still attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to the capital after 2023. The negotiations between the IFA organizer and the state-owned trade fair company have been emotionally charged for months. Above all, the consulting work of the former Berlin trade fair boss Christian Göke on the part of the organizer heated up the spirits.
As can be seen from confidential meeting minutes from February 11, large sections of the Supervisory Board of Messe Berlin see the “Causa Göke” as presumed high treason. Berlin’s Economics Senator Stephan Schwarz (independent) even recommended a “professional investigation” in the round “for hygiene reasons and political reasons”. Shortly thereafter, the committee decided with twelve votes to two, “due to the objectively very high possibility that business secrets will be used by Mr. Göke to the detriment of Messe Berlin” a complex investigation by an external auditing company.
For months, forensic experts from Deloitte rummaged through hundreds of trade fair files in search of “breaches of duty” by the ex-managing director. It took a while for the busy inspectors to report a hit. The find did not just convict Göke as a traitor – but conspicuous income from a consultant affair that reached to the top of public broadcasting.
The document marked by Deloitte was a consulting contract with a total volume of around 100,000 euros. Accordingly, in December 2020, the parties agreed on media training for Martin Ecknig, who shortly afterwards took over the management of the trade fair as Göke’s successor. Business Insider explains to several people familiar with the matter that at the time, chef Wolf-Dieter Wolf personally advised his preferred candidate on the supervisory board and chose former Spiegel journalist Gerhard Spörl to do so.
A highly explosive constellation: in addition to his work on the supervisory board for the trade fair, Wolf also heads the administrative board of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) and is responsible for monitoring the director Patricia Schlesinger. And Spörl? The renowned journalist is married – to Schlesinger. Did the broadcast supervisor give the ARD boss’s husband a lucrative job?
RBB board chief Wolf was not available for a personal statement and did not respond to an SMS. When asked, the husband of the ARD boss did not want to comment on the contract: “Since you always contact Messe Berlin.” There the press office said in a short statement: “We can hereby confirm that Mr. Spörl over the years worked for Messe Berlin in 2021 and 2022. Please understand that we usually do not publish notebooks and details of our business relationships with third parties. It goes without saying that Messe Berlin adheres to the necessary legal requirements and regulations when awarding contracts.”
How delicate is the radio connection? Paragraph 12 of the RBB state contract states: “Members of the board of directors may not have economic or other interests that are likely to jeopardize the fulfillment of their duties as a member of the responsible body.” official interests”. A spokesman for the director says: “RBB was not and is not involved in the process.” Ms. Schlesinger knew about the consultancy contract with her husband, but this was “his normal business as a publicist and journalist”. According to a written statement, there is no connection to the RBB. Opinion.
In an interview with Business Insider, however, broadcast controllers expressed their irritation at the process. “In my view, the contract should have been communicated internally,” says a member of the Board of Directors. The explosive contract with the ex-journalist also caused astonishment at Messe Berlin. Because: According to the job description at the time, Ecknig, who got the job, should have been a media professional for a long time. It states that the future managing director has rhetorical skills and must be able to “communicate appropriately”. “Why the company then hires a media trainer is questionable,” says an insider.
Background: According to supervisory board documents, the Personnel and Presidential Committee (PPA) of the fair commissioned the personnel consultancy Odgers Berndtson with the search for a suitable fair boss in May 2020, after Göke announced his retirement. According to Business Insider, the headhunters suggested more than half a dozen highly qualified managers. But instead of hiring an industry expert, Messe Supervisory Board Chairman Wolf brought the real estate expert and intimate friend Ecknig through as the new managing director on the control committee. A trade fair spokesman explains: “The process of filling the management of Messe Berlin has a clear formal procedure and WILL be accompanied by the Supervisory Board of Messe Berlin, the decision on an appropriate appointment is made by the entire Supervisory Board.”
It was also Wolf who announced the consultancy contract for Ecknig’s media training, say several people familiar with the process. Ultimately, however, the contract was signed by the trade fair’s acting head of finance. The consulting contract clearly corresponds to the purchasing guidelines of the national company. Indeed & actually all orders with an order value of more than 5000 euros go through the purchasing department. In the case of call-off orders based on framework agreements, however, this can be circumvented, according to the guidelines. According to information from Business Insider, the fair agreed with the husband of the ARD boss to work as a consultant for a daily rate of around 1500 euros. It was therefore planned to call up services in 2021 alone with a total value of well over 50,000 euros.
Spicy: In the meantime, the new head of the trade fair, Ecknig, has apparently changed the purpose of the consulting contract. Accordingly, Spörl no longer trains him, but supports the state-owned company with a publication for the 200th anniversary of the trade fair city of Berlin.