Account termination by left-wing organization: Red Help achieves stage victory in dispute with Sparkasse

The Sparkasse Göttingen has suffered another setback in its attempt to close the account of the left-wing solidarity association Rote Hilfe. The Braunschweig Higher Regional Court (OLG) has now rejected the Sparkasse's appeal against a ruling by the Göttingen Regional Court.

This means that the interim injunction issued by the regional court in January remains in effect. The savings bank must then continue to operate the association's business checking account until a final decision is made on the main issue. The decision of the Higher Regional Court announced on Thursday is incontestable. Rote Hilfe, based in Göttingen, has around 18,500 members. It primarily supports people from left-wing organizations and movements that are affected by criminalization and prosecution - for example by providing legal advice, arranging lawyers or covering legal costs. The association has been monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 2012, but it has not been banned or otherwise sanctioned. Last December, the Sparkasse Göttingen and the GLS Cooperative Bank closed the Rote Hilfe accounts. The savings bank referred to a call for donations from the association to support defendants in the “Antifa East proceedings” and antifascists imprisoned in Hungary.

The US State Department had previously classified the group called “Antifa Ost” as a terrorist organization - an assessment that neither the European Union nor the federal government agreed with.

The Sparkasse reassessed the risk of the business relationship with Rote Hilfe and assumed there was suspicion of terrorist financing. She began checking the account transactions every weekday and declared the associated personnel effort to be no longer reasonable. That's why she closed the business checking account through which member contributions and donations flowed.

The Rote Hilfe sued against the measure. The association does not support “Antifa East”, but rather, in accordance with its statutes, works to ensure that defendants in the so-called Antifa East complex receive a fair trial. Both the regional court and the OLG shared this argument. According to the courts, the savings bank failed to provide a proper reason for the termination. As an institution under public law, the Sparkasse is subject to the prohibition of arbitrariness - access to its facilities may only be denied for objective reasons. The bank's argument also did not convince the OLG judges in terms of content: the classification of "Antifa East" by the USA has no direct effect in Germany - the Sparkasse itself has admitted that. There is no factual basis for the claim that the association acts as a supporter of the group. Rather, the call for donations clearly referred to supporting accused and imprisoned people, not to the Antifa movement as such. “With its decision, the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court is creating legal certainty, even if the procedure is only preliminary,” said lawyer Jasper Prigge, who represents Rote Hilfe in the procedure. “The court is thus setting a clear limit on arbitrary account terminations.”

Rote Hilfe board spokesman Hartmut Brückner sees the OLG decision as "a sign of justice against hidden attacks on civil society that come from the US government. Supervisory authorities as well as banks must not prematurely obey the Trump administration." The savings bank should accept the decision and finally end the legal dispute in this way.

Already in February, Rote Hilfe reached an out-of-court agreement with GLS Bank to continue operating the association's ten accounts.