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Annoyed by the Cum-ex topic: Chancellor Olaf Scholz
Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
It is an afternoon in March when Chief Inspector Lukas R. comes across the e-mail address olaf.scholz@sk.hamburg.de while evaluating possible evidence.
It is the former mailbox of Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz (64), "sk" stands for Senate Chancellery.
R. immediately contacts Dataport, the IT service provider for the city of Hamburg.
He wants to know whether the mail data is still available.
R. is lucky.
The mailbox still exists, the service provider replies the next morning.
Due to a technical error, the mailbox was not deleted as planned when Scholz became Federal Minister of Finance in 2018 and moved to Berlin.
A process that is probably unique in history follows: a police officer confiscates the former mailbox of an incumbent Federal Chancellor with a court order.
The officials are not investigating Scholz himself.
But the officials came closer and closer to the chancellor in the months that followed.
The young police officer belongs to a special unit of the LKA Düsseldorf, the investigative commission »Alster«.
On behalf of the Cologne public prosecutor's office, the officials are investigating a Hamburg tax officer and former SPD politicians Johannes Kahrs (58) and Alfons Pawelczyk (89).
The question is whether the trio helped the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg between 2016 and 2018 to prevent a reclaim of taxes in the almost three-digit million range that had been wrongly reimbursed through cum-ex transactions.
Scholz was the first mayor of the Hanseatic city at the time.
Numerous details from the investigation files have leaked out in recent weeks: the tax officer wrote something about a "diabolical plan" in a Whatsapp message;
more than 200,000 euros were found in a locker at Scholz's old party friend Kahrs.
Neither have commented on the allegations.
There are details whose criminal meaning is so far unclear.
There's a good chance the money in the safe deposit box has nothing to do with the case.
Other, previously unknown details, however, which are available to manager magazin, the "Stern" and the "Norddeutscher Rundfunk", again raise questions about Scholz's role in the Hamburg cum-ex affair.
This Friday, August 19, Scholz is traveling to Hamburg to answer the questions of the cum-ex investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament for the second time.
Again it will be about his contacts with the former Warburg boss
Christian Olearius
(80).
However, the new details available to manager magazin, Stern and Norddeutscher Rundfunk have brought another aspect of the affair into focus.
E-mails, notes and minutes of the Warburg case suggest that the investigation was obstructed and the law was possibly violated.
They also show the means used by Scholz, his team and the Hamburg authorities to cover up the chancellor's role in this part of the biggest tax scandal in German history.
The focus is on three major oddities.
Oddity 1: Lie, untruth or just memory gap?
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