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Frankfurt Am Main: The finance minister of Germany's Hesse state, Thomas Schaefer has reportedly committed suicide over 'Coronavirus scare' after becoming deeply worried over how to cope with the economic fallout amid the COVID-19 outbreak, state premier Volker Bouffier said on Sunday.
The body of Thomas Schaefer, a 54-year-old member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, was found Saturday on railway tracks at Hochheim, near Frankfurt. The Wiesbaden prosecution's office said they believe he died by suicide. Police and prosecutors said that factors including questioning of witnesses and their own observations at the scene led them to conclude that Schaefer killed himself.
State governor Volker Bouffier linked Schaefer’s death to the virus crisis on Sunday.
Bouffier, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said Schaefer was worried about “whether it would be possible to succeed in fulfilling the population’s huge expectations, particularly of financial help.”
“I have to assume that these worries overwhelmed him,” Bouffier said adding, “He apparently couldn’t find a way out. He was in despair and left us. We are in shock, we are in disbelief and above all we are immensely sad."
Hesse is home to Germany's financial capital Frankfurt, where major lenders like Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have their headquarters. The European Central Bank is also located in Frankfurt.
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A visibly shaken Bouffier recalled that Schaefer, who was Hesse's finance chief for 10 years, had been working "day and night" to help companies and workers deal with the economic impact of the pandemic.
"It's precisely during this difficult time that we would have needed someone like him," said Bouffier.
Popular and well-respected, Schaefer had long been touted as a possible successor to Bouffier.
Like Bouffier, Schaefer belonged to Merkel's centre-right CDU party.
He leaves behind a wife and two children.
Germany's federal and state governments have drawn up huge aid packages to cushion the blow of largely shutting down public life to slow the spread of COVID-19.
(With AFP Inputs)
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