Jürgen Roth
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Jürgen Roth (4 November 1945 – 28 September 2017) was a German
publicist A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a company, a brand, or public figure – especially a celebrity – or for work or a project such as a book, film, or album. Publicists are public relations specialists wh ...
and investigative
journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...
.


Life

Roth was born in 1945 at
Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...
. After completing his secondary school education, Roth completed an apprenticeship as a forwarding agent. In 1968, he left and spent a year in Turkey. From 1971 onwards, he published books and television documentaries on organised crime, with a focus on Eastern Europe, Germany and international terrorism. He was also active in the organisation Business Crime Control. Roth believed that organised crime was deeply intertwined with the economic system and was a part of economic life in Europe. Roth died after a serious illness in September 2017 at the age of 71.


Reception and lawsuits

The ''
Rheinische Post ''Rheinische Post'' () is a major German regional daily newspaper published since 1946 by the ''Rheinische Post Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH'' company, and headquartered in Düsseldorf. The Post is especially dominant in the western part of North Rhi ...
'' sees Roth as one of the "best experts on the subject." However, he is considered a "contentious and, because of his polemics, controversial journalist," according to the ''
Berliner Zeitung The ''Berliner Zeitung'' (; ) is a daily newspaper based in Berlin, Germany. Founded in East Germany in 1945, it is the only East German paper to achieve national prominence since Reunification of Germany, reunification. It is published by Berl ...
'' on July 9, 2009. Thomas Feltes, criminologist at the
Ruhr University Bochum The Ruhr University Bochum (, ) is a public research university located in the southern hills of the central Ruhr area, Bochum, Germany. It was founded in 1962 as the first new public university in Germany after World War II. Instruction began ...
, wrote: "Without his books, the average reader would be missing something, and certainly also some investigators who, after their publication, will eagerly search for who is quoted, named or otherwise indirectly mentioned in them." There were several court cases against Roth because of his publications. Former Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder (; born 7 April 1944) is a German former politician and Lobbying, lobbyist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. From 1999 to 2004, he was also the Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (S ...
took legal action against his 2006 book ''The Germany Clan: The Unscrupulous Network of Politicians, Top Managers and the Judiciary''. The court ruled that Roth had to rewrite a passage in the book in which he linked a trip by Schröder to the
United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...
with his work for
Gazprom PJSC Gazprom ( rus, Газпром, , ɡɐsˈprom) is a Russian State-owned enterprise, majority state-owned multinational Energy industry, energy corporation headquartered in the Lakhta Center in Saint Petersburg. The Gazprom name is a contract ...
. However, Schröder's lawyers also tried to prevent the sale of the new, unobjectionable edition by issuing warnings to booksellers. Roth had previously presented an excerpt of his research activities on the news portal '' Fair Observer''. Following an interim injunction obtained by the lawyer of a Leipzig restaurateur at the Leipzig Regional Court, the book ''Mafialand Deutschland'' had to be withdrawn from bookstores and could only be sold with blacked-out passages., Boersenblatt.net vom 31. März 2009. In February 2010, former Bulgarian Interior Minister Rumen Petkov sued Roth for defamation. Roth had linked Petkov to the mafia and illegal drug trafficking. On 14 October 2010, Roth was acquitted by the Sofia District Court and the defamation charge was dismissed. From the summer of 2007, Roth wrote about an alleged
Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...
swamp over claims that high-ranking politicians, lawyers, police officers and journalists were members of mafia structures. Roth was heavily criticized by the journalist Reiner Burger, who describes the Saxony swamp as a legend, in a series of articles in the ''
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The (; ''FAZ''; "Frankfurt General Newspaper") is a German newspaper founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt and is considered a newspaper of record for Germany. Its Sunday edition is the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung'' ( ...
''. Burger also justified the criticism with past lost court cases; according to Burger, Roth was sentenced to pay damages by the Hamburg Regional Court in 2000 for his 1999 book ''The Grey Eminence'' and in 1999 for a television report. Burger accused Roth, among other things, of failing to speak directly to the people affected. In this context, Roth had to retract statements on his homepage about a Leipzig businessman. The witness whom Roth had relied on had told untruths and was sentenced to a fine of 4,200 euros by the Dresden District Court in spring 2008. Roth defended himself by saying that he had only not questioned the person directly in one case for a blog entry, and criticized Burger's attacks as "Kafkaesque" because Burger ignored, among other things, that important witnesses were put under pressure in the "Saxony swamp". In 2009, the investigative committee of the Saxon state parliament did not come to a clear conclusion about the "Saxony swamp". The CDU and FDP consider it to be refuted, the
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
and the Left Party claim to have found no evidence because the investigative committee was largely denied access to the files by the state government. The public prosecutor's office did not investigate further. Roth wrote in ''Schmutzige Demokratie'', a 2016 compendium of vignettes, for example that a young Hungarian politician who would later rise to international prominence was the victim of
kompromat Kompromat ( rus, компромат, p=kəmprɐˈmat, a=Ru-компрома́т.ogg, short for "compromising material") is damaging information about a politician, a businessperson, or other public figure, which may be used to create negative p ...
, because he had accepted a considerable bribe from a Russian organized crime figure through an intermediary twenty years earlier. However, Roth and his publisher chose not to expose themselves to a suit of
libel Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...
.


Bibliography

*1971: ''Armut in der Bundesrepublik'' *1972: ''Ist die Bundesrepublik Deutschland ein Polizeistaat?'' *1973: ''Partner Türkei oder Foltern für die Freiheit des Westens?'' *1974: ''Bundeswehr, BGS, Polizei, Hüter der Verfassung?'' *1975: ''Z.B. Frankfurt, die Zerstörung einer Stadt'' *1977: ''Aufstand im wilden Kurdistan'' *1978: ''Geographie der Unterdrückten'' *1981: ''Die Türkei – Republik unter Wölfen'' *1982: ''"Es ist halt so ..."'' *1984: ''Dunkelmänner der Macht'' *1985: ''Zeitbombe Armut'' *1986: ''Makler des Todes'' *1987: ''Rambo'' *1987: ''Das zensierte Buch: Geschäfte und Verbrechen der Politmafia'' *1988: ''Die illegalen deutschen Waffengeschäfte und ihre internationalen Verflechtungen'' *1990: ''Die Mitternachtsregierung'' *1992: ''Sie töten für Geld'' *1992: ''Verbrecher-Holding'' *1995: ''Der Sumpf'' *1996: ''Die Russen-Mafia'' *1997: ''Absturz'' *1999: ''Die Graue Eminenz'' *1999: ''Die roten Bosse'' *2000: ''Schmutzige Hände: Wie die westlichen Staaten mit der Drogenmafia kooperieren'', Goldmann, *2001: ''Der Oligarch'' *2002: ''Netzwerke des Terrors'' *2003: ''Die Gangster aus dem Osten'' *2004: ''Ermitteln verboten!'' *2005: ''Gejagt von der Polenmafia'', Eichborn, *2006: ''Der Deutschland-Clan: Das skrupellose Netzwerk aus Politikern, Top-Managern und Justiz'', *2007: ''Anklage unerwünscht: Korruption und Willkür in der deutschen Justiz'', Eichborn-Verlag, *2009: ''Mafialand Deutschland'', Eichborn-Verlag, *2016: ''Schmutzige Demokratie: Ausgehöhlt – Ausgenutzt – Ausgelöscht?'', Ecowin Verlag,


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Roth, Jurgen 1945 births 2017 deaths German male writers Journalists from Frankfurt German male journalists 20th-century German journalists 21st-century German journalists