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»The Squaire« building at Frankfurt Airport: KPMG is one of the tenants
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Markus Mainka / Aviation Stock / IMAGO
The Cologne public prosecutor's office has been searching the headquarters of the consulting firm KPMG in Frankfurt am Main since Tuesday.
"In addition, the private homes of five (formerly) employed lawyers and tax consultants are also being searched as suspects," the prosecutors said.
The "Handelsblatt" reported that the reason for the raid were services related to illegal tax deals using the cum-ex method.
It is about the suspicion of aiding and abetting tax evasion.
KPMG confirmed the raid: "We are fully cooperating with the authorities," said a KPMG spokesman.
According to the report, more than 60 investigators, including tax investigators from Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia and the Recklinghausen criminal police, are looking for relevant communication in the form of e-mails and other written correspondence during the raid on "The Squaire" building at Frankfurt Airport.
In »cum-ex« transactions, blocks of shares were moved back and forth by several participants around the dividend record date with (»cum«) and without (»ex«) a right to a dividend.
As a result, tax offices reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid at all.
The state suffered billions in damage.
The investigations into cum-ex offenses, in which banks were also involved, are in full swing.
The first criminal trials ended with convictions.
Just a few weeks ago, the Cologne public prosecutor's office began a search of the Frankfurt offices of the JPMorgan bank.
In the previous months, she had already searched the offices of the US banks Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, the major British bank Barclays, the Swedish bank SEB and DekaBank in Frankfurt.
Sol/dpa/Reuters