Dhe long-time chairman of the supervisory board of the crisis-plagued Bundesliga soccer club Schalke 04, Clemens Tönnies (64), has finally concluded with chapter S04. “Schalke was my purpose in life for 26 years, they were dreamy years with a lot of responsibility and incredible success. Now I have a duty to look after my company even more intensively. That’s why I left, ”said the meat producer in an interview with“ Welt am Sonntag ”.
When asked whether his heart was bleeding because the descent of the heavily indebted royal blue traditional club seems to be programmed, Tönnies emphasized: “I keep my fingers crossed that this will not happen. I’m completely out of the game at Schalke. There is nothing more to say. ”On this Sunday (6:00 pm in the FAZ live ticker for the Bundesliga and on Sky) Schalke will be bottom of the table against Leverkusen with just three points from nine games. The club has not won the Bundesliga since January.
The billionaire entrepreneur Tönnies had been chairman of the supervisory board since 2001 and had been a member of Schalke’s committees since 1994. Tönnies had come under heavy criticism due to racist statements and the scandal surrounding numerous corona cases in his meat factory. Parts of the Schalke fan scene had also turned away from him.
Tönnies said that during the Corona outbreak at his company, “a hooting crowd stood in front of my house and yelled: ‘Hang him up!’ I wasn’t afraid myself, but I feared for my family. ”Tönnies heads Germany’s largest meat company. Due to the high number of corona infections in the workforce, Tönnies had to pause production at the headquarters in Rheda-Wiedenbrück from mid-June to mid-July. There are also allegations regarding the working conditions of the employees and the keeping of the animals for slaughter.
There is currently a major corona outbreak at the Tönnies slaughterhouse in Weißenfels. More than 170 employees there were infected with the Sars-CoV-2 virus. “In the Corona hype around June 17th, it was very clear that I am the inventor and the horror propagator of Covid-19,” he said when asked why he is now publicly speaking. “At this point in time I was responsible for everything negative, for everything that went wrong in this country.” In such a situation it makes no sense to oppose it.
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