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Chancellery Minister Wolfgang Schmidt
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Michael Kappeler / dpa
"In order to bring the truth to light," Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt is also to be invited as a witness by the committee of inquiry into the cum-ex scandal.
The CDU announces this in the Hamburg Parliament.
His parliamentary group will apply for this in a timely manner, said Götz Wiese, spokesman for the parliamentary group in the committee, of the dpa news agency.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz is scheduled to testify before the committee for a second time next Friday.
Schmidt is a close confidant of Scholz and used to be the head of the Hamburg Senate Chancellery.
Wiese accused the SPD of withholding information on how to deal with the Hamburg Warburg Bank, which was involved in the Cum-Ex scandal, during Scholz' time as Hamburg mayor (read more here).
"The role of the SPD-led Senate in the decision not to reclaim the taxes from Warburg remains unclear," he said.
"It is shocking to see how SPD politicians stonewall all along the line, most recently Chancellor Scholz again in the federal press conference."
In 2016, before the tax authorities decided not to reclaim the taxes from the bank, Scholz met twice with their shareholders Christian Olearius and Max Warburg.
At that time, investigations were already underway against Olearius on suspicion of serious tax evasion in connection with cum-ex transactions.
These deals are designed to unlawfully reclaim taxes when trading stocks.
At his summer press conference in Berlin on Thursday, the chancellor again rejected all allegations of political influence in the case.
Despite repeated requests, Scholz "shirked the answer" as to whether he had also prepared his meetings with the bankers with Johannes Kahrs, then a member of the Bundestag and SPD district chairman in Hamburg-Mitte, said Wiese.
»Johannes Kahrs refuses to comment.
It's hard to imagine that the information from the SPD environment that has been presented to the committee so far is complete."
The Cologne public prosecutor's office is investigating against Kahrs, the former Hamburg Senator for the Interior Alfons Pawelczyk (SPD) and an officer responsible for Warburg in the tax office for large companies.
They are accused of favoring tax evasion in a cum-ex context.
A search last year found more than 200,000 euros in cash in a locker at Kahrs.
as/dpa
