Credit: Bärbel Miemietz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
It's a fairly major twist for the Berlin election race: last night, the SPD's lead candidate, Steffen Krach, had his home and party offices raided by police on suspicion of corruption.
"I assume the allegation is corruption," Krach told reporters, adding: "I would definitely like to reject this insinuation as baseless."
Investigators are looking into whether Krach may have taken a bribe to influence the bidding process over a hospital redevelopment in Lehrte, near Hannover. Krach denies the claims – and spent most of yesterday in front of any camera he could find, repeating the word Transparenz as often as he could.
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Anyone living here has felt a growing gap between the city as it actually is and the version being served up by mainstream outlets. We experienced that disconnect firsthand. We saw political censorship shape coverage decisions and felt the weight of billionaire ownership land directly on our work. It reached a point where we could either keep going along with it, or try to build something better.
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