Cum-Ex: Public prosecutor calls on Warburg-Bank to repay 190 million euros
Created: 08/11/2022, 16:23
By: Moritz Serif
The committee of inquiry into Cum-Ex meets in Hamburg (archive image).
© Christian Charisius/dpa/picture alliance
The public prosecutor's office in Bonn demands state money back from the Warburg Bank.
A stock trader who was involved in the deal is also affected.
Bonn - The public prosecutor's office in Bonn has asked the Warburg Bank and a stock trader to repay around 190 million euros to the state treasury because of cum-ex transactions.
Justice spokesman Sebastian Buß said it was the implementation of the first judgment by the Bonn Regional Court that had become final.
However, the Warburg-Bank has announced objection, reports the
Handelsblatt
.
All taxes have already been paid through repayments.
In the judgment confirmed by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in July 2021, the bank was obliged to repay more than 176 million euros and the stock trader to pay 14 million euros, of which he had already deposited three million.
The two accused stock exchange traders were also given suspended sentences.
Cum-Ex: Criminals took advantage of loopholes in the law
In cum-ex deals, criminals used a loophole in the law to cheat the German state out of money for years.
As a result, tax offices reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid at all.
The state suffered billions in damage.
In 2012 the tax loophole was closed.
Several public prosecutors and courts nationwide have been investigating for years to clear up one of the biggest tax scandals in post-war German history.
Last year, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that cum-ex is punishable by law.
What is Cum-Ex and what does Chancellor Scholz have to do with it?
With cum-ex, the state is tricked so that capital gains tax that has only been paid once is refunded several times.
For this purpose, blocks of shares are traded back and forth between several business partners around the dividend record date.
As a result, it is unclear who was entitled to a tax refund for the automatically paid capital gains tax - and the tax is refunded several times.
Olaf Scholz was the first mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018 - this is when the cum-ex scandal at the Warburg Bank occurred: in 2016, the Hanseatic city's financial authorities refrained from reclaiming 47 million euros from cum-ex transactions from the bank .
The question is whether political influence was exerted on this decision.
A parliamentary investigative committee of the citizenship is investigating.
Investigators recently searched emails from Scholz.
(mse/dpa/afp)