He answered questions from the commission of the parliament of Hamburg (Germany) for more than three hours. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz firmly denied, before a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the “Cum-ex Files” scandal on Friday August 19, having exercised any “influence” in order to settle this complex file of tax fraud on the dividends.
The German leader, splashed by this fraud revealed in 2017, hammered throughout the hearing not to have exercised “no influence on the Warburg tax procedure”, named after a bank in Hamburg.
The “Cum-ex Files” scandal relates to an ingenious tax optimization scheme put in place by banks, allowing foreign investors to reduce their taxes on dividends. Several dozen people have been charged in the case in Germany, including bankers, traders, lawyers and financial advisers. A dozen countries are concerned in total.
Among the incriminated banks is therefore the Warburg in Hamburg. The institution should have reimbursed 47 million euros to the German port city, but the municipality had waived this in 2016. The bank finally had to pay tens of millions of euros in reimbursement, under pressure from the government of ‘Angela Merkel.
Investigators are trying to find out whether political leaders – including Olaf Scholz, then mayor of the city – pressured the municipal tax authorities to stop collecting these taxes. “There was no political influence on the tax procedure”hammered Olaf Scholz, sweeping “assumptions and insinuations” relayed according to him in the media.
The decision to waive reimbursement of amounts owed by the Warburg bank was reportedly taken shortly after a conversation between Olaf Scholz and Christian Olearius, the bank’s manager. New elements revealed in recent days undermine the denials of Angela Merkel’s successor. According to several media, emails from someone close to Olaf Scholz would provide elements “potentially probative” about “thoughts on data deletion”. At the home of another elected Social Democrat, investigators discovered more than 200,000 euros in cash in a safe. Other documents seized would suggest that Olaf Scholz, contrary to what he has said so far, would have raised the subject of reimbursement directly with Christian Olearius.