1 Billions of marks (dollars) have been stolen or disappeared into worthless projects in the massive transfer of resources to eastern Germany since reunification, the government acknowleged Monday.
2 Finance Minister Theo Waigel ordered an investigation but his ministry said there was no central accounting office to keep track of the thousands of projects run by states and cities throughout eastern Germany.
3 The German government has spent about 840 billion marks (dlrs 500 billion) to rebuild eastern Germany, of which Der Spiegel magazine said Monday about 65 billion marks (dlrs 40 billion) has disappeared or ended up in worthless projects.
4 The government was acknowledging a problem that people in east Germany have been noticing for months, even years -- that a sudden infusion of cash and capitalism has led to an explosion of wild, poorly planned growth.
5 Poor accounting and planning have saddled communities with expensive, useless projects such as overpriced building restorations, unneeded sewage plants and roads, water and electrical lines leading to abandoned industrial parks.
6 The huge transfers to eastern Germany have been vital to getting the region on its feet but the vast tax exemptions and subsidies weren't closely monitored, said Dieter Vogel, the chief government spokesman.
7 'The eastern recovery wouldn't have been possible without these subsidies,' he said. But it is clear to anyone who 'travels from empty industrial park to empty industrial park' that not all the incentives have been fruitful.
8 The industry parks, thousands of which have popped up like mushrooms in the tiniest towns of eastern Germany, offer towns a quick fix of cash and credit for new water, sewage and electrical lines.
9 Their construction has been spurred by billions in federal and European Union subsidies.
10 It is not unusual to see a 'high-technology center' along an isolated stretch of east German highway. Some of these centers don't even have telephones.
11 'The towns have scrambled to get the industry parks, but a lot of them are left with new water, power and streets, and nothing else because no one is using the industrial parks,' said Hartmut Gassner, a Berlin lawyer who advises investors.
12 After years of poor services, communities rushed to build new sewage plants. Eastern Germany now has enough waste capacity to handle the sewage of twice their current populations, the environment ministry says.
13 Western German architects and consultants share part of the blame for the wasteful construction 'because their fees were always fatter when they convinced a community to build something,' Gassner said.
14 'It's a mixture of incompetence, ambitious westerners and overwhelmed administrators,' Gassner said.
15 The figure of 65 billion marks may be an exaggeration, but the basic scenario painted by Der Spiegel is a true one, said Harald Ringstorff, governor of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, in northeastern Germany.
16 Ringstorff worried that the new reports would lead to cuts in subsidies and tax breaks for east Germany, which he said now has the capacity and experience to make better use of them.
17 And indeed, the Taxpayers' Association, a private nationwide group, called for the abolition of the 7.5 percent 'solidarity tax' on private incomes that went into effect this year to help rebuild the east after 40 years of communism.
18 'Instead of siphoning ever more cash from the taxpayer's wallet, the state should dedicate more resources to oversight,' said Achim Rohde, a leader of the pro-business Free Democratic Party.

The government was acknowledging a problem that people in east Germany have been noticing for months , even years - - that a sudden infusion of cash and capitalism has led to an explosion of wild , poorly planned growth .
growth
Why is the growth poorly planned?