2024-01-05 18:01:26
He is the phantom in the billion-dollar Cum-ex scandal: Paul Mora, a former investment banker with positions at, among others, Merrill Lynch and HypoVereinsbank (HVB) in London and later co-founder of the financial firm Ballance/Arunvill. In the years between 2006 and 2011 he was involved in numerous stock group transactions at the expense of the German tax authorities. Mora organized trading for extremely wealthy investors such as the now deceased Rafael Roth, had good contacts with the Warburg Group and earned millions of euros.
But years ago, the New Zealander fled to his homeland, his houses on Mallorca and in the Bernese Alps are deserted, his companies liquidated or sold. The once busy banker, who has rarely been seen in public in recent years, has become one of the most wanted people in the world.
Searches at airports
Alongside the already convicted tax lawyer Hanno Berger and Sanjay Shah, a British hedge fund manager who was recently extradited to Denmark, Mora is considered in investigative circles to be one of the central figures in the cum-ex industry, consisting of banks, stock traders and short sellers. Anyone who pays attention at international airports has probably already seen the plump face of the man in his mid-fifties with gray temples and combed-back hair – right next to the portrait of Jan Marsalek, the also volatile former Wirecard board member.
Mora has been wanted for three years using an international arrest warrant. If the New Zealander, who is supposed to live in a spacious property not far from Christchurch, leaves his home country, he must expect to be arrested by police authorities at any time and extradited to Germany due to Interpol’s “red notice”: action should be taken against him as early as March 2021 The first criminal trial for tax evasion amounting to 113 million euros will begin in the Wiesbaden regional court. But Mora stayed away from the criminal proceedings. He can be confident that his home country will not extradite him to Germany.
A few weeks after his 56th birthday, Mora’s lawyers have once again received official documents from the German criminal justice system. The sender is the Bonn Regional Court, where most cum-ex criminal cases have been heard so far. Shortly before Christmas, the Cologne public prosecutor’s office presented a new indictment against the alleged mastermind. As the “Handelsblatt” first reported, Mora has to answer for his involvement in cum-ex transactions of the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg between 2006 and 2011. Specifically, investigators accuse him of 30 cases of serious tax evasion, with damages amounting to 447.5 million euros. If convicted, he could face up to ten years in prison.
Contents of the indictment known
Central points of the indictment are known from the first cum-ex criminal trial at the Bonn regional court, in which Mora’s former business partner Martin S. was sentenced to a suspended sentence in March 2020. At HVB, Mora was initially S.’s boss, and together they later founded the Ballance Group. On the 651 pages of the indictment at the time, Mora is also listed as a defendant in 358 places.
When asked by the FAZ, a court spokeswoman confirmed receipt of the new indictment, which has the file number 23 Kls 5/23. However, she did not mention the name of the accused. The 9th Large Criminal Chamber must decide on the admission and thus the opening of a possible main hearing, it was said from Bonn. By the time this issue went to press, neither Mora’s lawyers in Germany nor New Zealand had responded to a written query; However, it is also not certain whether the indictment from the Bell Gully law firm has been translated into English.
“Gap in the law Cum-ex”
In the past, Mora had initially been willing to make statements to the media in his home country. In 2017, when the investigations by prosecutors from Frankfurt and Cologne had long been known, Mora announced that he had relied on the advice of the “respected and important German tax lawyer” Hanno Berger for the cum-ex deals. Otherwise, he earns his money through real estate and investments in hedge funds, reinsurers, tech and oil companies.
Marcus Jung Published/Updated: Recommendations: 27 Marcus Jung Published/Updated: Recommendations: 71 Julian Staib, Hamburg Published/Updated: Recommendations: 44
In the fall of 2019, a few weeks after the start of the trial against his former colleague Martin S., Mora only let his lawyers speak for him. His involvement in the stock transactions was “inappropriately highlighted”. In the case of Cum-ex, a “loophole in the law” was exploited that was well known to the German authorities.
#Fugitive #Phantom #charged #cumex #scandal