After a long legal dispute, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has published the protocols of its crisis team during the corona pandemic. The online magazine "Multipolar" had obtained the publication of the protocols for the period from January 2020 to April 2021 through a lawsuit. What is behind the portal?

According to the imprint, "Multipolar" is run by the author Paul Schreyer, who has caused a stir in the past with conspiracy theory stories about September 11th and an extremely Russia-friendly stance.

According to Schreyer, he founded “Multipolar” in January 2020 together with the freelance journalist Stefan Korinth and the political scientist Ulrich Teusch. Their common goal is to practice "well-founded criticism of rule" that goes beyond the "officially desired" criticism (of Putin, Trump, China, etc.)". At least that's what their website says. Ulrich Teusch will be leaving the editorial team at the end of 2023 eliminated.

Almost since the beginning of the corona pandemic, Paul Schreyer has been dealing intensively with the topic, including in his book "Chronicle of an announced crisis. How a virus could change the world". The Munich political scientist Werner Bührer examined the work and came to the conclusion that Schreyer assigned a central role to the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation and unknown transnational actors in controlling public perception of the pandemic. According to Schreyer, the media did not manage to weigh things up calmly and thoughtfully. The economic interests of the pharmaceutical industry were crucial for public attention.

According to Bührer, Schreyer never allows himself to be drawn into “apodictic judgments” in his statements. Rather, he uncovers supposed ambiguities in his works and then creates horror scenarios that could derive them. However, according to Bührer, Schreyer owes his readers solid evidence for the allegations mentioned.

In his 2021 article “The Legend of Confirmation Pressure,” extremism researcher Markus Linden describes the editor of “Multipolar” as a “comparatively skilled conspiracy theorist.” Bührer confirms Linden's verdict.

Since 2020, Paul Schreyer has also been publishing critical articles and articles on the corona pandemic, the resulting measures and the corona vaccines at regular intervals on “Multipolar”.

“Multipolar” and Schreyer see themselves confirmed by the content of the protocols that have now been published and, above all, draw conclusions from the redactions used by the RKI. The fact is: The RKI graded the risk assessment from “moderate” to “high” on March 17th. A day earlier, it was noted in the minutes that the risk assessment had been prepared and could now be “scaled up”. The exact wording of the passage is: "The risk assessment will be published as soon as (person's name redacted) gives a signal."

"Multipolar" therefore sees it as proven that the "tightening of the risk assessment from 'moderate' to 'high' - based on all lockdown measures and court rulings - was, contrary to what was previously believed, not based on an expert assessment by the RKI, but on the political instruction from an external actor".

However, the protocols suggest that the RKI itself was responsible for the risk assessment and classified the risk as “high”. Only publication depended on the approval of the named person. The RKI responded to the allegations on Monday afternoon and, following a request from T-online, announced that the blacked out person was “a person employed by the Robert Koch Institute”.

In May, “Multipolar” wants to go to the Berlin administrative court again. This time to obtain complete access to the minutes without redactions.

Sources: ZDF, “T-Online”, “Merkur”, Werner Bührer