Former German MP Affirms Indictment Accusing Him of Taking Bribes from Azerbaijan

Former conservative parliamentarian Eduard Lintner has affirmed that the indictment against him in the Azerbaijani Laundromat trial is correct — even though it includes accusations that he accepted bribes.

While Lintner said in a Munich court on May 15 that he agreed with the indictment, he later told DPA he was innocent, because he did not consider the payments he received from the Azerbaijan government as bribes.

The case centers on Azerbaijan’s covert strategy to buy political influence in Europe, particularly within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a body tasked with safeguarding human rights.

The Azerbaijani Laundromat was a complex money-laundering operation and slush fund that handled $2.9 billion over a two-year period, which was revealed in 2017 by OCCRP and several media partners. 

From 2012 to 2014, even as the Azerbaijani government arrested activists and journalists wholesale, members of the country’s ruling elite were using a secret slush fund to pay off European politicians, buy luxury goods, launder money, and otherwise benefit themselves.

One of those politicians was Lintner, who formerly held a seat in Germany’s parliament with the conservative Christian Social Union of Bavaria party.

Lintner confirmed in court that the accusations laid out by prosecutors were accurate. However, he insisted that his lobbying for Azerbaijan was driven by “honorable motives,” citing concerns over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and drawing parallels to Germany’s Cold War-era divisions.

Judge Jochen Bösl dismissed Lintner’s framing during a hearing this week, according to reporting by Paper Trail Media. He told the court that Lintner’s acknowledgement of the charges would be treated as a confession, which could reduce sentencing. 

The court is expected to deliver a verdict in July.

Two other defendants — a former staffer and a relative of Lintner — have already confessed and had their cases dropped. A fourth suspect, former Christian Democratic Union lawmaker Axel Fischer, awaits trial later this year. 

In court, Lintner claimed Azerbaijan’s payments were public and that he never questioned why they flowed through intermediaries, Paper Trail reported. 

“We didn’t think about why they paid through us — there was nothing to hide, because we disclosed everything,” he told the court.