1 Introduction
When Klaus Zumwinkel, the head of Deutsche Post, was escorted out of his home by officials
of the Bochum prosecutor's office on live television at 7 a.m. on 14 February 2008, no one
suspected that this would be the beginning of what turned out to be probably the largest media
campaign that Liechtenstein had ever experienced. Never before had there been so many
requests for interviews, never before had so many media representatives been in
Liechtenstein, never before had so many journalists attended a press conference of the
Government and the Head of State, never before had there been so many reports on the
Principality of Liechtenstein, and never before had the interest in the small country been so
great.
4965
3972
2979
Articles
1986
993
00 |
Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr Ma
Fig. 1: Overview of number of media articles about Liechtenstein, Dec. 2007-Mar. 2008 (Source: SKOE!)
The questions that arose, especially in Liechtenstein, after the media reports subsided a bit for
the first time, were: "Why did the house search take place night then? The data stolen from a
Liechtenstein bank had been in the possession of the German authorities for over a year
already." And "Why was the action 'played' this way in the media?" Although the
"Zumwinkel affair" and the resulting German and international tax debate had an obvious
political dimension, it was essentially carried out via the international media and especially
the German media, not at the established bilateral political and administrative levels.
Two things were particularly unusual about the whole affair: Klaus Zumwinkel was the
chairman of the board of one of the largest German companies, and the company is still
majority-owned by the State.
Also striking were the vehemence and rhetoric used to discuss the tax affair in the media, the
many different issues and facets that were suddenly linked and mixed up with the basic
problem of tax evasion in Germany, often without distinguishing whether this was in fact a
German or a Liechtenstein or a European problem, as well as the vague impression that long-
! SKOE ... Government Spokesperson's Office