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Olaf Scholz and Peter Tschentscher
Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and Hamburg's Mayor Peter Tschentscher are supposed to testify to the so-called Cum-Ex scandal in front of the parliamentary committee of inquiry of the Hamburg citizenship.
The two SPD politicians are among around a dozen first witnesses named by the committee on Friday.
Among them are the former Hamburg member of the Bundestag Johannes Kahrs and the former Interior Senator and Second Mayor Alfons Pawelczyk (both SPD).
The committee of inquiry is supposed to clarify the allegation of the possible influence of leading SPD politicians on the tax treatment of the Hamburg Warburg Bank involved in the cum-ex scandal.
The background to this are meetings between the then Hamburg mayor Scholz in 2016 and 2017 with Warburg co-owner Christian Olearius, who was under investigation on suspicion of serious tax evasion.
Tschentscher was Senator for Finance at the time.
Hamburg later allowed possible additional tax claims of 47 million euros to become statute-barred, a further 43 million euros was only claimed after the Federal Ministry of Finance intervened.
In the meantime, the Warburg Bank has paid all tax claims, but this is not an admission of guilt, as it emphasized.
The committee also decided to hear Olearius as a victim.
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