A proposal by a Russian investor to buy the German regional airport Frankfurt-Hahn (in the west) has caused opposition from the local authorities, who called on the German government to solve the problem, reports AFP.

Viktor KharitoninPhoto: Hryhoriy Sysoev / Sputnik / Profimedia

The region of Hesse, the airport’s minority shareholder, which filed for bankruptcy in 2021, is “extremely critical of the possible sale of Khan Airport to a Russian investor,” the state’s finance ministry told AFP on Tuesday.

“We ask the federal government (…) to explore all options to prevent this sale,” he added.

At the meeting of the airport’s creditors on Tuesday, the contract was not concluded and the decision was postponed, administrator Jan Markus Plattner told reporters.

At least two offers to buy the platform, designed mainly for low-cost flights and struggling in the wake of the Covid 19 pandemic, are on the table.

According to Platner, beyond any “political” considerations, these are “two good investors.”

The candidates are the German Richter real estate group and the NR Holding company, which owns the nearby Nürburgring race track, and is owned by Russian businessman Viktor Kharitonin.

This billionaire is the patron of the pharmaceutical laboratory “Pharmstandard”, the manufacturer of the Russian vaccine “Sputnik” against Covid-19.

He was not included in the list of persons who came under EU sanctions in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

However, “at the moment we cannot do business with Russian oligarchs,” Hesse’s Finance Minister Michael Bodenberg (CDU) said on regional public radio on Tuesday.

The sale will avoid “damage to Germany’s foreign and economic policy,” opposition deputy from the conservative CSU party Sebastian Brehm said on Monday.

According to the economic daily Handelsblatt, the airport recorded about 1.3 million passengers in 2022.

The airport was opened in 1993 on a former US base and bought in 2017 by the Chinese group HNA.

Located approximately 100 kilometers away, Frankfurt am Main Airport is the largest airport hub in the country with approximately 70 million passengers.