Banker's racial comments spark legal inquiry

PROSECUTORS are investigating a German central banker on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after he made disparaging remarks about immigrants, including accusing them of making Germany "more stupid".

Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin, 65, nicknamed "Rambo" by the German press, was reported as saying that Germany was "becoming on average more stupid" because Turkish, Middle Eastern and African immigrants were poorly educated.

The central bank distanced itself from Mr Sarrazin's remarks.

Last year he was criticised by Bundesbank president Axel Weber and had to apologise after telling a magazine that most of Berlin's Arab and Turkish immigrants had no useful function "apart from fruit and vegetable trading".

His latest comments, made at a business gathering in the south-western city of Darmstadt, not only provoked outrage among immigrant groups, some of whom filed lawsuits, but also came to the attention of public prosecutors in the city.

"We are investigating him on possible charges of inciting racial hatred and slander," Klaus Reinhardt from the public prosecutors' office in Darmstadt said yesterday.

Almost three million people of Turkish origin and an estimated 280,000 of Arab extraction live in Germany.