2023-08-22 10:38:07
According to a press report, e-mails from those closest to current Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) raise new questions about his role in the tax affair involving the Warburg Bank in Hamburg. As the magazine “stern” reported on Tuesday, Scholz’ office manager could not find the calendar entry with which the former mayor of Hamburg had previously confirmed a meeting with the then Warburg co-owner Christian Olearius in November 2017.
The Warburg affair is about Hamburg’s waiver of reclaiming millions in tax refunds that the institute had wrongly received. Scholz was the first mayor of the Hanseatic city at the time. He has confirmed meetings with Olearius, but says he has no concrete recollection of the content of the talks.
According to the “stern” report, the calendar entries for the meetings were apparently missing. “That irritates me,” wrote office manager Jeanette Schwamberger in April 2021 to Scholz’s confidant and current Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt and to today’s government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. “I have never seen an appointment with Olearius from November 2017 on the calendar. Not even an appointment in October 2017. It’s all strange, but we’re all through calendars.”
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As the “stern” further reported, citing the emails between the Scholz employees, Schmidt wrote back: “The appointment was in November 2017. And I also remember that we had seen that.” But the State Criminal Police Office in Düsseldorf was also able to do this Reportedly found no corresponding calendar entry. The authority, which confiscated an e-mail inbox from Scholz as part of its investigation, has now evaluated it.
November dates entered
Eight appointments have been set for November 10, 2017, from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., the “stern” reported. An appointment with Olearius is not listed. According to the magazine, Chancellor spokesman Steffen Hebestreit did not answer questions about the emails with reference to responsibilities.
The Union in the Bundestag has been calling for a committee of inquiry into Scholz’s role in the Warburg affair for months. However, this was prevented in July by the traffic light parties. The CDU and CSU announced that they would go before the Federal Constitutional Court. In Hamburg, a parliamentary investigative committee has been dealing with the question of possible political influence by SPD politicians for two years. Months ago, the content of the information was expanded to include the cum-ex transactions of the former Landesbank HSH Nordbank.
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