Large majority demands more information from Olaf Scholz about the cum-ex scandal

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Olaf Scholz

Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa

Olaf Scholz comes under pressure in the cum-ex affair at the Hamburg Warburg Bank.

The finance minister is said to have had more intensive contacts with the bank than he previously admitted.

The left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag has already requested a current hour on the role of the former Hamburg mayor in the scandal, and the finance committee will also deal with it on Wednesday.

And the overwhelming majority of Germans also see the SPD candidate for chancellor-design as an obligation.

According to a survey by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of the SPIEGEL, more than 80 percent demand that Scholz should provide more detailed information than before.

Even the SPD supporters are convinced by a large majority that Scholz should inform more transparently: Almost two thirds of them expect more precise information about the Cum-Ex affair.

The need for clarification is even greater among supporters of other parties - among voters of the Left and the AfD it is even more than 90 percent.

The "Süddeutsche Zeitung", "Die Zeit" and the NDR had reported that Scholz had met Christian Olearius, a co-owner of the private bank Warburg, more often than he had previously admitted.

This emerges from the banker's diary entries, which the media were able to evaluate.

However, there are no indications that Scholz, as the first mayor of Hamburg at the time, had any influence on the fact that the tax authorities did not reclaim from the bank inadmissible tax refunds amounting to 47 million euros.

In cum-ex transactions, investors can have a once-paid capital gains tax on stock dividends reimbursed multiple times with the help of banks.

To do this, they moved shares with (cum) and without (ex) dividend entitlements between one another around the cut-off date for the dividend payment.

The treasury suffered billions in damage.

Numerous banks are therefore in the focus of investigators, and there have been repeated searches of financial institutions and law firms.

The affair also made things more uncomfortable for Scholz in his hometown of Hamburg.

Not only the opposition parties, but also the Greens co-ruling in Hamburg are demanding more clarification.

The Second Mayoress Katharina Fegebank was surprised by the new information: "I think that it is now important that today's Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz explains to the Bundestag budget committee why he has met Mr. Olearius several times and why it is so close gave precisely in this investigation phase and why he did not tell the parliamentarians, "said Fegebank, who was also second mayor in the Senate under Scholz for three years.

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as / dpa / Reuters / AFP