[1] Otto Graf Lambsdorff, the federal minister for economic affairs, was forced to resign in 1984 after being accused of accepting bribes from CEO Friedrich Karl Flick.
In January 1976, the Flick Company filed a tax exemption for this deal at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, which was approved by Minister Hans Friderichs (FDP) and later also by his successor and party colleague Otto Graf Lambsdorff.
[3] In 1981, tax fraud investigator Klaus Förster, after lengthy inquiries, found evidence that there had been money transfers from the Flick company to all parties that were represented in the German Bundestag parliament.
Lambsdorff resigned from his office as a federal minister on 27 June 1984, after formal accusation was admitted at the Bonn regional court, and Friedrichs had to step down as the CEO of the Dresdner Bank.
[6] Two years of proceedings clarified that between 1969 and 1989, politicians of all major parties (CDU, CSU, FDP, and SPD) had received money from the Flick company: a total of 25 million Deutsche Mark.