
Death of German State Finance Minister Official Linked to Virus Crisis - connectsnk
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-29/death-of-german-finance-official-linked-to-virus-crisis
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Berlin (AP) -- The state finance minister of Germany’s Hesse region, which
includes Frankfurt, has been found dead. Authorities said he appears to have
killed himself and the state's governor suggested Sunday that he was in
despair over the fallout from the coronavirus crisis. The body of Thomas
Schaefer, a 54-year-old member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian
Democratic Union, was found Saturday on railway tracks at Hochheim, near
Frankfurt. Police and prosecutors said that factors including questioning of
witnesses and their own observations at the scene led them to conclude that
Schaefer killed himself. State governor Volker Bouffier linked Schaefer’s
death to the virus crisis on Sunday. Bouffier said Schaefer was worried about
“whether it would be possible to succeed in fulfilling the population’s huge
expectations, particularly of financial help.” “I have to assume that these
worries overwhelmed him,” Bouffier said. “He apparently couldn’t find a way
out. He was in despair and left us.” Germany's federal and state governments
have drawn up huge aid packages to cushion the blow of largely shutting down
public life to slow the spread of COVID-19. Schaefer had been Hesse’s state
finance minister for a decade.

