German president huffs and puffs as paper exposes home loan calls

Germany’s president and its biggest-selling newspaper traded blows yesterday over whether he tried to prevent it from publishing a report on a controversial private loan.

President Christian Wulff has faced intense pressure to explain himself since it emerged he left an angry message on 12 December on the voicemail of Bild’s editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann – the day before the story appeared.

Mr Wulff insisted in a TV interview on Wednesday he hadn’t tried to block the report but had merely asked for it to be delayed a day.

But Mr Diekmann expressed “astonishment” about that in a letter yesterday to Mr Wulff. He wrote that the paper had already agreed to a one-day delay on 11 December, and that Mr Wulff’s spokesman – whom the president fired just before Christmas – provided and then retracted responses before Mr Wulff called.

He said Bild wanted to publish the text of the message “in order to clear up misunderstandings regarding the actual motivation and contents of your call” and asked for Mr Wulff’s approval.

Mr Wulff said he didn’t want the transcript published. “The words spoken in an exceptionally emotional situation were meant exclusively for you and for no-one else,” he wrote.

Bild reported on 13 December that Mr Wulff received a €500,000 (£412,000) private loan from the wife of a wealthy businessman friend, apparently at below market rates, in 2008 to buy a house. At the time, he was governor of Lower Saxony.