stepped down as Chancellor, the German government guaranteed to cover €1 billion of the Nord Stream project cost, should Gazprom default on a loan. However, this guarantee expired at the end of 2006 without ever having been needed. Soon after leaving the post of Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder agreed to head the shareholders' committee of Nord Stream AG. This has been widely described by German and international media as a conflict of interest, the implication being that the pipeline project may have been pushed through for personal gain rather than for improving gas supplies to Germany. Information about the German government's guarantee was requested by the European Commission. No formal charges have been filed against any party despite years of exhaustive investigations. In February 2009, the Swedish prosecutor's office started an investigation based on suspicions of bribery and corruption after a college on the island of Gotland received a donation from Nord Stream. The 5 million Swedish kronor (US$574,000) donation was directed to a professor at Gotland University College who had previously warned that the Nord Stream pipeline would come too close to a sensitive bird zone. The consortium has hired several former high-ranking officials, such as Ulrica Schenström, former undersecretary at the Swedish Prime Minister's office, and Dan Svanell, former press secretary for several politicians in the Swedish Social Democratic Party. In addition, the former Prime Minister of Finland, Paavo Lipponen, had worked for Nord Stream as an adviser since 2008. Land-based alternatives On 11 January 2007, the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Finland made a statement on the environmental impact assessment program of the Russia–Germany natural gas pipeline, in which it mentioned that alternative routes via Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad, or Poland might theoretically be shorter than the route across the Baltic Sea, would be easier to flexibly increase the capacity of the pipeline, and might have better financial results. There were calls from Sweden to consider rerouting the pipeline onto dry land. Poland proposed the construction of a second line of the Yamal–Europe pipeline, as well as the Amber pipeline through Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, as land-based alternatives to the offshore pipeline. The Amber project proposed laying a natural gas pipeline across the Tver, Novgorod, and Pskov oblasts in Russia and then through Latvia and Lithuania to Poland, where it would be re-connected to the Yamal–Europe pipeline. Latvia proposed using its underground gas storage facilities if