A Jerusalem Post article in late January covering the German-Emirati Joint Council for Industry and Commerce as a conduit for legal and illegal trade with Iran played a role in an administrative shake-up at the business group, according to a report in the daily Die Welt.

Peter Göpfrich, the head of the council, discharged a low-level female employee who posted the minutes of its “Working Group Iran” project on the council’s Web site.

Whether she was whistle-blowing or had mistakenly posted the document online was unclear. However, German observers of Göpfrich’s management style see an unsavory decision to divert attention from his promotion of German-Iranian trade at the expense of the security of Israel and the West.

According to the Die Welt article, “Trade via Dubai: Secret German business deals with Iran,” investigative articles in the Post and The Wall Street Journal Europe had prompted Göpfrich to put the “emergency brakes” on the project, which sought to conduct business in Iran through Dubai. [Read More]