A group division of Deutsche Börse has been targeted by the Cum Ex investigators. The public prosecutor's office in Cologne had Clearstream's premises searched in Eschborn near Frankfurt, a spokesman said. The "Handelsblatt" had first reported on the action. Again and again there are searches in Germany because of the Cum-Ex scandal.
A speaker of the German stock exchange explained to cooperate fully with the authorities. The searches would take place as part of a Cum-Ex investigation against customers and employees.
Clearstream is one of the world's largest providers of securities services and holds assets worth around € 13 trillion. The searches are about the suspicion of aiding and abetting tax evasion. Clearstream is said to have helped clients achieve multiple reimbursement of capital gains taxes.
In the case of the so-called cum-ex-transactions, investors were able to reimburse the once paid withholding tax on stock dividends multiple times. For this purpose, they postponed shares among themselves (Latin: "cum") and without ("ex") dividend entitlement around the dividend payment deadline. Overall, the scandal is about hundreds of cases with a suspected total damage of several billion euros.
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Cum and Ex: Simplified model of a dividend dealTax experts had long considered cum-ex trades to be a legal tax hiccup. For some years, investigators and prosecutors evaluate the procedure but almost unanimously as tax evasion. Frankfurt's Attorney General alone investigates ten cases in which it suspects tax damages of more than 810 million euros.
From Wednesday next week, for the first time a German court will deal with the consequences of the Cum-Ex scandal. At the district court Bonn two former bankers of the Hypovereinsbank are accused, which are to have specialized later with an investment company on Cum-Ex-Deals. The two Britons are charged with serious tax evasion in 33 cases, in another case it should have remained in an attempt. The 41-year-old and the 38-year-old have testified comprehensively that they face imprisonment of up to ten years.