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Under fire: Finance Minister Scholz (left) with Hamburg Mayor Tschentscher
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Sean Gallup / Getty Images
In the tax affair surrounding the Hamburg bank MM Warburg, Hamburg's First Mayor Peter Tschentscher and Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (both SPD) have to defend themselves again against political attacks.
The trigger is new evidence that suggests that Tschentscher could have intervened in the Warburg tax case during his time as Hamburg's finance minister.
On Friday, SPIEGEL and manager magazin published the research on the case, which is also being dealt with in an investigative committee of the citizenship.
It is about a presumed gift from the city of Hamburg to Warburg, at the expense of the taxpayer.
The long-established bank had obtained tax credits for years with dubious share deals, so-called cum-ex deals - wrongly, as is now clear.
In 2016, the tax office for large companies wanted to reclaim taxes from Warburg, including 47 million euros from credits for 2009. If 2009 is waived, the statute of limitations will expire at the end of the year, according to the office.
The tax authorities, of which Tschentscher was in charge at the time, initially refused to approve.
The two owners of the bank, Christian Olearius and Max Warburg, met with the then mayor Scholz in the town hall to prevent the repayment and also sent a seven-page defense letter to Tschentscher, who passed the letter on to his employees five days later with remarks in green, the Senator's color, on the first page: "Request for information on the state of affairs."
The current issue is that a few more passages are underlined on the following pages, albeit in a different shade of green.
Underneath are the words »Facts not yet determined«, »Withdrawal« and »Existential threat«.
Who underlined these key arguments of the bank and why?
Shortly after the letter was passed on, the tax authorities and tax authorities decided at a meeting that the money should not be reclaimed after all.
In the meantime it has been transferred anyway - thanks to a ruling by the Federal Court of Justice, the statute of limitations was no longer applicable.
Scholz and Tschentscher always emphasize that they had no influence on the decisions of the responsible tax office.
CDU suspects "tangible fraud scandal"
In view of the involvement of the Chancellor candidate Scholz in the affair, the political competitors of the CDU, Greens and Left are now using the new evidence to attack the SPD candidate for Chancellor.
"If it should be true that Olaf Scholz exerted political influence on the Hamburg tax authorities, it would be a tangible fraud scandal," said Carsten Linnemann, head of the SME union MIT and deputy head of the Union parliamentary group (CDU), the SPIEGEL. “It would be an interesting constellation if, on the one hand, he was demanding tax increases and, on the other hand, he was not claiming back many, many millions of taxpayers' money. Such an approach is not compatible with any government office. "
The left also attacked Scholz and Tschentscher.
“The green ink has dried.
The chain of clues is watertight, ”tweeted financial expert Fabio De Masi.
Scholz and Tschentscher "should stop squirming," said De Masi.
“Cum Ex was a criminal.
It intervened in an ongoing tax procedure in favor of criminals.
This is a case for the public prosecutor's office! "
The new publications showed "that the decisive letter (threatening letter) from #WarburgBank was not just forwarded to the tax office, but was provided with comments from the highest political level," wrote the financial policy spokeswoman for the Greens in the Bundestag, Lisa Paus, on Twitter .
This also contradicts the version of Olaf Scholz, "who has always publicly asserted that the tax office made a completely independent decision in this case."
Scholz confidante sees "lies and dirt campaign"
The Scholz and Tschentscher camp, however, continues to defend itself against the allegations.
"How desperate are you actually?" Replied Scholz's State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Wolfgang Schmidt, the Green politician Paus - and described the allegations as a "campaign of lies and dirt".
The Hamburg tax authorities also reject the suspicion of political influence.
"The underlinings in the document mentioned were not made by the former Senator for Finance, but by the tax administration clerk responsible at the time," said a statement on Friday.
According to the rules of procedure of the tax authority, the green pen in the course of business is reserved for the senator as the authority manager in the course of business.
"On the other hand, there are no rules for marking with highlighters, as in this case."
In fact, on Friday a witness testified in the investigative committee that it was not Tschentscher, but that she had underlined the passages in question - with a green highlighter.
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