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Chancellery Minister Wolfgang Schmidt: “Many assessments and conjectures”
Photo: Ulrich Perrey / dpa
Chancellery Minister Wolfgang Schmidt considers the allegations of leading SPD politicians influencing the decisions of the tax authorities in the Cum-ex affair to be clear.
Thousands of pages of files had been viewed and many witnesses questioned, Schmidt said on Friday in front of the Hamburg Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry.
Now there is more clarity and he dares to say that the financial administration made its own decision regarding the Hamburg Warburg Bank, said the SPD politician.
“One can now lament that no other decision has been made.” Nonetheless, he would be happy “if we could now go ahead and pursue those who need to be pursued”.
The investigative committee wants to clarify the accusation that leading SPD politicians may be influencing the tax treatment of the Warburg Bank involved in the scandal.
Specifically, it is about meetings between the then mayor Olaf Scholz and the bank shareholders Christian Olearius and Max Warburg in 2016 and 2017. Olearius was already being investigated for tax fraud in connection with cum-ex transactions.
In 2016, after the first meeting, the Hamburg tax authorities allowed a reclaim of unjustly refunded capital gains tax amounting to 47 million euros against the bank to run into the statute of limitations.
In 2017, another 43 million euros were only requested after pressure from the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Scholz admitted the meetings during his two interrogations before the committee, but stated that he could not remember the content of the conversation.
Most recently, in mid-August, he once again ruled out any influence on the tax process.
An explosive protocol with statements from Scholz about the cum-ex scandal has so far been kept under lock and key.
The Ministry of Finance is delaying the release and justifies it with tax secrecy.
Now it is contradicted.
In the case of 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.
"No knowledge of conversations"
Chancellery Minister Schmidt criticized the media coverage of the Cum-ex affair in the committee.
The impression was given that Scholz had influenced the decision of the tax authorities.
The reports referred to diary entries by bank co-owner Christian Olearius about meetings with Scholz in 2016.
"The fact that Olearius wrote something about Scholz's reserved behavior was suppressed."
During this time, he himself was a member of the Senate as State Councilor for Foreign Affairs, said Schmidt.
However, he was not involved in tax matters and therefore had "no perception" of the Warburg cause and "no knowledge of discussions that the mayor held".
It was only through reporting on the mayor's meetings with Olearius that he dealt with the subject and read "many assessments and assumptions" in the media, "but few facts".
Schmidt pointed out that no witness before the committee had confirmed that Scholz or any other SPD politician had influenced the Warburg tax case.
Schmidt is considered Scholz's close confidante, he has been by his side for around 20 years.
wit/dpa