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German conservative leader slams Shroder’s nomination to Rosneft board

The secretary general of Germany’s CSU party, Andreas Scheuer called Shroder 'a Russian soldier"

BERLIN, August 20. /TASS/. The secretary general of Germany’s CSU party, Andreas Scheuer, on Sunday sharply criticized the nomination of German ex-chancellor Gerhard Shroder to the board of directors of Russia's largest oil company Rosneft.

"Former chancellor Shroder is becoming a Russian soldier," he said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag, published on Sunday. "Shroder’s activities in Russia have a bad smell; private economic interests are getting mixed with politics."

Gerhard Schroder, who headed the German government between 1998 and 2005, was sharply criticized in Germany after the Russian government nominated him as an independent director to the board of directors of Russian state-run oil giant Rosneft. Other nominees are former Treasurer at ExxonMobil Donald Humphreys, Managing Director of Nord Stream AG Matthias Warnig, and Professor of the Finance Department of the State University Higher School of Economics Oleg Viyugin.

Rosneft will hold an extraordinary meeting of shareholders on September 29 to discuss payment of dividends for the first half of 2017 and elect members of its board.

Last year, Schroder was appointed board chairman of the Nord Stream 2 company, the operator of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. Prior to that, he headed the consortium for construction of the first stage of the project.