Investors and banks have defrauded the state of billions with illegal cum-ex deals - investigations are still ongoing. On Tuesday, the police again searched banks.
Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - In the investigations into tax evasion through cum-ex share transactions, there has been another raid on banks.
Public prosecutors, tax investigators, officials from the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Federal Criminal Police Office as well as IT experts searched the offices of financial institutions in Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich on Tuesday morning. The procedure for cum-ex deals and similar deals is directed against those responsible and employees of the banks, said the Cologne public prosecutor. The point is to find evidence that could be important for the Cum-Ex investigation for the crime periods from 2010 to 2016.
According to the "Handelsblatt", there were searches at the private bank Hauck & Aufhäuser in Frankfurt and Munich and the Varengold Bank in Hamburg. According to information from the newspaper, the officials are on the trail of so-called reverse market claims - constructs as successor models to the cum-ex deals, which the legislature made impossible from 2012 onwards. Hauck & Aufhäuser explained that they are fully cooperating with the authorities. Varengold made no comment.
Investors took advantage of a loophole in the law for cum-ex deals. Around the dividend cut-off date, shares with ("cum") and without ("ex") dividend entitlements were shifted back and forth between several participants. In the end, it was no longer clear to the tax authorities who owned the papers. Tax offices reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid. The state suffered billions in damage.
Criminal proceedings have been going on for years against the initiators of Cum-Ex deals; in March the first trial at the Bonn district court ended with a conviction of the two accused stock exchange traders. The police recently searched offices of the banking association in connection with cum-ex deals.
The circle of those involved and suspects in the Cum-Ex scandal is large: at the beginning of June in North Rhine-Westphalia alone, around 880 suspects were recorded in 68 investigations by the Cologne Public Prosecutor, according to a report by State Justice Minister Peter Biesenbach (CDU).
The deputy leader of the Left in the Bundestag, Fabio de Masi, called for the consequences of the Cum-Ex scandal. "We finally need a watertight system with a full IT-supported comparison between taxes paid and claims for reimbursement."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200818-99-212861 / 2