Cum-Ex scandal: Olaf Scholz in front of the Hamburg Committee – What does the Chancellor remember?

Created: 08/19/2022, 09:50

By: Andreas Apetz

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has to appear a second time before the Hamburg committee on the Cum-Ex matter.

(Archive photo) © Kay Nietfeld/dpa

The Cum-Ex scandal has been under investigation for two and a half years.

Olaf Scholz is also at the center of the action.

Now he is before the committee a second time.

Hamburg – It will be the second appearance for Olaf Scholz (SPD) in front of the Cum-Ex Committee of the Hamburg Parliament.

On Friday (August 19), the Federal Chancellor will appear as a witness and help clarify the question of whether he or other leading SPD politicians have influenced the tax entanglements of the Warburg Bank involved in the cum-ex scandal.

Scholz denies any allegations.

The chancellor's appearance was originally planned as the conclusion of the parliamentary committee of inquiry.

For the Federal Chancellor, it would have been the long-awaited end of the Cum-Ex issue.

But even after two and a half years, the discussion about possible political influence will probably not come to an end.

Cum-Ex scandal: New allegations after investigations by the Cologne public prosecutor

The latest investigations by the Cologne public prosecutor’s office now raise the suspicion that a Scholz employee could have deleted emails in the Cum-Ex affair – including some “potentially evidentiary” messages, writes the

.

The press reports on previously kept secret minutes of a statement by Scholz 2020 before the Finance Committee of the Bundestag have raised many new questions.

The CDU and the left in the citizenship now want to expand the investigation and invite Scholz a third time.

Chancellor Scholz repeatedly emphasized that there was “not a single indication” of political influence.

The summer press conference in Berlin on August 11 showed that the questions about the Cum-Ex affair are slowly annoying him.

In the capital, six journalists spoke about the topic.

The Chancellor's answers were brief.

That was "completely unbelievable", according to the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag Finance Committee, Matthias Hauer.

In the

office, Hauer described the answers to the questions as "conspicuously snotty, monosyllabic, evasive." The opposition accuses the chancellor of only admitting what has already become public knowledge.

Olaf Scholz: Opposition calls for resignation

In view of the new findings, the chairman of the CDU in the committee, Richard Seelmaecker, called for the resignation of Scholz and his successor as mayor, Peter Tschentscher.

In 2016, both had political influence on the treatment of the Warburg Bank, which was involved in the Cum-Ex affair, in order to protect the financial institution from high tax reclaims, he told

.

"Both have to resign," he also told the

.

The background to this is meetings between Scholz and the shareholders of Warburg Bank, Christian Olearius and Max Warburg, in 2016 and 2017. According to Olearius, after the first meeting in the town hall, today's Chancellor recommended that the bankers send a letter to Tschentscher in which the bank had presented the reclaim of 47 million euros of wrongly refunded capital gains tax as unjustified.

Scholz admitted to the meeting, but said he could not remember the content of the talks.

Olaf Scholz: After gaps in memory, criticism rains down

Matthias Hauer described the gaps in his memory of the conversation with the owners of the Warburg Bank on

as “completely unrealistic”.

The fact that the chancellor's bad memory could actually only be a pretext is made

clear by the minutes of a meeting of the Bundestag's Finance Committee, which was classified as "secret", and published by

As a result, Scholz is said to have granted a meeting with the Warburg shareholders in July 2020, but downplayed its importance, said Seelmaecker.

Financial expert Fabio De Masi also considers Scholz's arguments about Cum-Ex to be implausible.

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Olaf Scholz is criticized from all sides.

"It stinks to high heaven that Olaf Scholz can't remember anything," said Hamburg CDU leader Christoph Ploß of the

media group.

Stephan, the financial expert at the anti-corruption organization Transparency International, described Scholz's account as "simply implausible".

"The chancellor is a proven expert on these issues, he knew the importance of the issue of waiving a million-dollar tax debt from the Warburg-Bank from cum-ex transactions," Ohme told the

newspapers.

Cum-Ex tailwind comes from Lindner

There is only tailwind from their own coalition.

There, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) expresses his “full confidence” in the Chancellor.

In the

, the FDP leader said that he always perceived Olaf Scholz as a person of integrity, whether in the opposition or in the government.

"There is no reason to doubt it," says Lindner.

(aa/dpa)