Die Welt: Gazprom’s German “daughter” is operated by former Stasi spy

Top-manager of Gazprom Germania, German subsidiary company of the world’s largest power concern, in due time was connected with East Germany’s security police, Stasi, daily Die Welt writes.

Hans-Uve Kreher, Director on personnel and organizational matters, was an informal employee of the communist East German security services and collaborated with it under operative nicknames of Roland Schroeder and Hartmann, the paper says. Kreher himself does not deny that he had worked with the Stasi. A company spokesman also declared that they knew about it. However, he added that “we are not an enterprise penetrated by Stasi agents”.

According to a 600-page list of the Stasi informal employees at the disposal of the daily Die Welt, between 1977 and 1979 as well as between 1985 and late 1989, the legal adviser cooperated with the Stasi Hauptabteilung (Main department) XVIII, responsible for security of the national economy enterprises and counteraction to industrial espionage.
It was known already earlier about cooperation with the Stasi by Felix Strehober, Financial Director of Gazprom Germania, and Matthias Warnig, the Managing Director (CEO) of the Nord Stream AG, a company for construction and operation of the Nord Stream submarine gas and Gazprom daughter company.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Warnig is an acquaintance of Russian President Vladimir Putin since his days in the GDR and in the socialist East Germany he was engaged in intelligence activity regarding the Dresdner Bank. It was on March 29, 1977, when Kreher, the current Gazprom Germania Director on personnel and organizational matters, gave his first written obligation “on a voluntary basis to support the Ministry of State Security in its responsible work in the name of security of the GDR, in the work of prevention of any actions of imperialistic intelligence and separate persons hostile to our social order”. His operative cover name was Roland Schroeder, Die Welt says, under which he signed the second obligation on December 3, 1985, this time as a Stasi free-lancer Hartmann. Kreher, now 58, delivered information to the Stasi even before the written registration of his collaboration with the GDR Ministry of State Security. For intelligence agencies he was of certain interest, as he had knowledge about all major investments into power field of Thuringia.