The Warburg affair has been following Olaf Scholz for years. Now investigations could put the chancellor under pressure again – it’s about a calendar entry.
Hamburg – Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) could face new difficulties in the Warburg affair about cum-ex deals: one mirrorAccording to the report, investigators from the Cologne public prosecutor’s office came across a possible indication of a possibly relevant meeting between Scholz – at the time Hamburg’s mayor – and the then finance senator Peter Tschentscher (also SPD). On Friday (September 23), the news magazine referred to a “confidential note” from the investigators that it had received.
Olaf Scholz in the Cum-Ex affair: “Confidential note” on calendar entry – the Chancellery is silent
The public prosecutor’s office refers to an appointment entry in Tschentscher’s confiscated appointment calendar from September 6, 2017 with the designation “BGM I HSH and 17.11.2016”, writes the mirror. The abbreviations stand for today’s Chancellor Scholz, who was Hamburg’s first mayor (“BGM”) at the time, and the former Landesbank HSH. The date in turn marks the day on which the Hamburg tax authorities decided in the meantime to waive a tax refund from the Warburg Bank.
A spokesman for Tschentscher, who is currently Hamburg’s first mayor, classified this as the mirror against as “misinformation”. The entry in Tschentscher’s calendar reads “BGM I HSH”. There is no reference to the date mentioned or the Warburg Bank. On September 6, 2017, Scholz and Tschentscher took part in a meeting on HSH Nordbank in the town hall. The institute was being privatized during this period.
A spokeswoman for the federal government spoke loudly mirror no further details on request. The calendar entry quoted by the magazine has no relation to the area of responsibility of the Federal Chancellery, she said. In principle, however, the office can only comment on its own processes.
Scholz in the criticism: De Masi calls Chancellor a “Pinocchio”
Meanwhile, criticism of Scholz is growing again: The former left finance expert Fabio de Masi tweeted in the morning that the chancellor was “a Pinocchio”: “He is telling the untruth. I can prove this.” De Masi referred to several surveys by the Bundestag, in which Scholz had shown “very precise memory gaps”. “Nevertheless, he always knows what he didn’t do.”
The cum-ex affair is about the question of whether the Hamburg tax administration could have saved the private bank Warburg from a multi-million dollar tax refund in connection with the so-called cum-ex scandal several years ago, possibly due to political intervention. An investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament has been investigating the events for almost two years. Scholz repeatedly and emphatically rejected all allegations, most recently in a committee survey in August. But even there the chancellor had come under pressure. He avoided a question by saying “I don’t want to”.
The topic had already hit the headlines for Scholz’s chancellor candidate freestyle in late summer 2020, but then hardly played a role in the federal election campaign. According to a survey from August, however, a majority of Germans now have doubts about the chancellor’s credibility in the matter.
Cum-Ex affair: investigations are ongoing – Scholz problem through the back door?
The public prosecutor’s office in Cologne is investigating – independently of the political investigations in Hamburg – against bank employees on suspicion of tax evasion through cum-ex transactions. The investigations are not actually directed against Scholz or other politicians.
A “cum-ex deal” is the move of stocks around a dividend record date in order to recover capital gains tax that has not been paid. The state lost billions through this practice by banks in the past. The classification as tax evasion was initially not finally clarified for years and was only legally decided by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). The Hamburg affair about the local Warburg Bank is about a waiver by the Hamburg tax authorities to reclaim taxes amounting to 47 million euros in connection with cum-ex transactions in 2016. The money was then reclaimed at a later date . (AFP/fn)
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