The chancellor of Germany, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, in low hours due to a crisis on various fronts, is now facing the splashes of a multimillion-dollar tax fraud in a bank in Hamburg, a city of which he was mayor from 2011 to the beginning of 2018. of the scandal called Cum-Ex (in Latin, with-without), revealed in 2017 and that affected several European countries, which consisted of a practice by which investors quickly exchanged shares to obtain double refunds in the dividend tax . In 2016, inexplicably, the Hamburg City Council gave up claiming the local bank Warburg for the taxes due, which amounted to 47 million.
Scholz yesterday denied any responsibility in this regard, in a statement before a parliamentary commission in Hamburg – the city, with the rank of land, therefore has a regional Parliament, and its mayor is head of the regional Executive –, which seeks to clarify whether political leaders pressured the municipal treasury to give up recovering those rates. “I had no influence in the Warburg bank case. There was no influence on the part of politics in the treasury," Scholz assured. The now chancellor is not accused of anything, nor is he being investigated; he appeared before the parliamentary committee as a witness.
It is the second time that Olaf Scholz has testified before this commission – the first was in April 2021 – since two years ago it emerged that in 2016 he had met twice with the then president of the bank, Christian Olearius. The Hamburg treasury was considering claiming the money from the Warburg, and Olearius was trying to prevent it. Weeks later, the City Council decided not to claim the amount.
Olaf Scholz says he doesn't remember what they talked about. "I had many conversations when I was mayor," the chancellor said yesterday. I always had a clear line in all of them; I normally do not make any assessment of the facts, I do not promise anything”.
German media have recently published documents and emails suggesting that Scholz may have indeed discussed the matter with banker Christian Olearius. On the other hand, a month ago it was learned that the police had found 214,800 euros in cash in the safe of Johannes Kahrs, a former Social Democrat deputy related to the bank, which has fueled suspicions about possible fixes.
Finally, in 2020 the Hamburg City Council claimed 173 million euros in taxes from the Warburg, which the bank paid while continuing to litigate in court. It is estimated that the Cum-Ex scheme may have cost taxpayers €10 billion. Prosecutors are investigating some 1,500 people in the financial industry.
This case threatens to further tarnish Foreign Minister Scholz, who this week was involved in an awkward situation by not replying in situ to some phrases of the Palestinian president about the Holocaust and who deals with inflation and the rise in energy prices, which irritate the industry and citizens.
