Timeline: German gaffes, graft and goof-ups
Read about the missteps of Germany’s prominent politicians.
Let’s face it – though Germany may be a world-class producer of everything from beer to Benzes, the results are decidedly lacklustre compared with other eurozone countries when it comes to manufacturing riveting political scandals.
The political career of France’s would-be president Dominique Strauss-Kahn was felled in 2011 after a bizarre episode with a maid at a New York hotel who alleged he had sexually assaulted her (the charges were later dropped). In Greece in 2012, a neo-Nazi parliamentarian physically attacked a fellow MP on live TV. And this year, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – notorious for the “bunga bunga” sex parties he allegedly held at his villa near Milan – was found guilty of paying an underage prostitute for sex.
As the eurozone’s more staid pillar, Germany hasn’t witnessed anything quite so bombastic in the run-up to its federal elections on September 22. Nevertheless, its leading politicians have committed a number of gaffes and goof-ups, and perhaps even a few actual scandals.
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