Raid on Berlin SPD leader eleven days before the election. He is being investigated by the public prosecutor's office in a federal state where his own party governs

On Wednesday, the public prosecutor's office in Hanover searched the flat of Steffen Krach, leader of the Berlin SPD and its candidate for mayor, eleven days before the election to the Berlin state parliament. It is investigating suspicion of bribery in connection with the sale of a plot of land belonging to a former hospital, a matter on which Krach had decided as head of the Hanover region. Details of the suspicion come from journalistic sources; the prosecutor's office itself confirmed only that proceedings are underway and that searches took place. The presumption of innocence applies, no indictment has been filed, and the party denies the allegations.

One detail, however, changes the picture that a Central European reader is used to. The prosecutor's office handling the case is based in Lower Saxony, a federal state governed by the SPD, where the justice ministry is run by a Social Democrat. The usual framework, in which a rival is sought behind the prosecution of a politician, therefore does not fit here. Political interference is not documented, but neither is its absence.

What investigators were looking for

The searches on Wednesday concerned three locations. The first was Krach's flat in Berlin's Schöneberg district, the second was the Berlin SPD's state headquarters in Wedding, and the third was in Hanover. Sources differ on how to describe it: Tagesspiegel calls it Krach's former official seat, taz calls it the party's state headquarters. Tagesspiegel ↗

According to both papers, the core of the suspicion is the sale of land belonging to a hospital in the municipality of Lehrte. Three years ago, Krach's regional administration decided to close the old hospital by 2030 and replace it with a modern health center. Krach, as chairman of the supervisory board of a municipal network of ten clinics, publicly stated at the time which concept he considered better. Investigators are examining whether he received a gift from that bidder, though it is unclear whether it was meant for him personally or for the regional SPD organization. taz ↗

The case has an unusual feature. The bidder Krach backed ultimately did not win the contract. According to the newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, this is the company G&W Vermögensverwaltung, whose premises investigators had already searched in May this year, also on suspicion of corruption. Süddeutsche Zeitung ↗

Krach himself told public broadcaster rbb in the afternoon that he had known about the investigation since Wednesday morning but did not know the details. "I have nothing to hide," he stated, adding that he wants absolute transparency. Berlin SPD spokesperson Matthias Kuder rejected the allegations and announced full cooperation with the authorities. The prosecutor's office declined to comment on the content of the proceedings for tactical reasons. Tagesschau ↗

Why timing is a sensitive question in Germany

German prosecutors' offices are not independent in the sense we are used to. Under paragraphs 146 and 147 of the Courts Constitution Act, state justice ministers have the right to issue instructions to them, the so-called Weisungsrecht, and are usually informed about significant proceedings. However, the existence of that power does not mean that anyone used it in Krach's case, nor that the minister knew about the timing of the raid in advance. Legal Tribune Online ↗

The left-leaning daily taz put it directly in its headline: the raid came at an inconvenient time. German law, however, does not have a precise election moratorium; prosecutors are bound only by rules of proportionality and by the requirement not to needlessly damage someone's reputation through an investigation. Moreover, a search of a home is typically ordered by a judge, not by the prosecutor's office, which may only do so itself in cases of imminent danger from delay. The decision is therefore not purely in the prosecutor's hands.

Still, there is a strikingly close precedent. Exactly five years ago, on September 9, 2021, the Osnabrück prosecutor's office raided the federal finance and justice ministries shortly before the Bundestag election, even though it had held the court orders for several weeks already. The investigation, however, was not directed against the then finance minister and chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, but against unnamed officials responsible at the customs unit FIU for combating money laundering. What was disputed was the timing and the way the prosecutor's office informed the public about the action. Osnabrück is located in the same Lower Saxony, but the justice ministry there was then led by the CDU. Tagesspiegel ↗

The matter had an aftermath only after the election. In February 2022, the Osnabrück regional court overturned the order concerning the justice ministry as disproportionate, and in June that year the administrative court found specific media statements by the prosecutor's office to be unlawful. In fact, no search actually took place at the justice ministry — the ministry handed over documents voluntarily — and it was precisely the opposite impression that the court criticized the prosecutor's office for creating. Neither of those rulings proves a political order; they speak of proportionality and communication. taz ↗

The situation the raid arrived in

The Berlin SPD is in fifth place in polls, behind the Left Party, the CDU, the AfD, and the Greens, with individual pollsters most recently giving it between 11 and 15 percent. In 2023 it had 18.4 percent, which was at the time its worst Berlin result ever. Krach was meant to be the outside face who would stop the decline. This year he also took over co-chairmanship of the state organization, and the day before the raid it was announced that Defense Minister Boris Pistorius would appear with him in the campaign next Monday. Spiegel ↗

The SPD is not in contention for first place according to polls, but even a small shift in its support could decide what kind of coalition emerges in Berlin. Commentators, including those at the Austrian daily Der Standard, find it hard to imagine forming a state government without the Social Democrats, which makes the damaged candidate a topic even for parties that will have to negotiate with him. Der Standard ↗

From Slovakia it looks exactly the opposite

Slovakia has its own version of the question of how the judiciary should treat a politician during a campaign, only it is framed in reverse. Whereas in Berlin the question is whether the prosecutor's office should have waited, in Košice the procedural steps are being taken, but the essential thing — a court decision on the indictment — has not come even after a year.

The prosecutor filed an indictment in the Valentín case against five people and two companies in mid-July 2025. The case concerns overpriced purchases of contactless thermometers and four spreaders for regional road workers, with damages exceeding 550,000 euros, and the charges followed the police operation Valentín in February 2023. The court has not yet decided whether to accept the indictment and order a main hearing. Korzár ↗

There are two documented procedural obstacles, and both concern bias. The statutory judge, and then practically all criminal judges at both the Košice city and regional courts, filed objections because one of the co-accused is the brother of a Košice regional judge. The Supreme Court therefore assigned the case to the District Court in Námestovo in January this year. On August 27, that court issued an arrest warrant for Rastislav Trnka because the indictment could not be delivered to him even through the police. Trnka appeared voluntarily on September 3, accepted the indictment, and the warrant was revoked the same day. Aktuality.sk ↗

Trnka is, however, an accused, not a defendant, even though opponents refer to him as a defendant. The indictment is sitting in court, but no main hearing has been ordered, and only that step turns an accused person into a defendant. He is defending his post as an independent candidate, and the combined local and regional elections are on October 24. The day before the Berlin raid, he announced a campaign without personal attacks, saying that the outcome should be decided by solutions for the region, not by artificially manufactured conflicts. Pravda ↗

Also read: 56 candidates are running for eight governor seats. The Prešov region has eleven, the Trenčín region four

The two cases are therefore not the same situation, and there is no point pretending they are. In Berlin, a procedural step came so close to the election that its timing is being discussed. In Košice, the indictment has been sitting in court for over a year, and by October 24 it will apparently still not have been decided whether the case goes to a main hearing. Voters are thus heading to the ballot box with a matter that has neither been closed nor opened.

Limits of this view

We know almost nothing about the content of the German file, and the prosecutor's office declined to comment on it. Everything known about the suspicion comes from journalistic sources within security circles, mainly from Tagesspiegel and the newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. It is therefore possible that the raid is a routine procedural step following the May searches at the other party to the case, rather than a separately timed event.

The minister's party affiliation in itself neither proves nor disproves anything. Political interference in this matter is not documented, and neither is the fact that anyone ruled it out. Whoever draws any further conclusion from this does so without evidence.

The comparison with Slovakia also has its limits. German prosecutors' offices are bound by ministerial instructions; the Slovak prosecutor's office does not have this tool, and the dispute there is about something else — public pressure and the speed of the courts. What is shared is the question voters ask themselves, not the institutions that answer it.

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