IInvestigators close to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) apparently came across incriminating evidence in the affair about a failure to claim a tax refund from the private bank MM Warburg by the Hamburg tax authorities. As NDR, “Stern” and “Manager Magazin” report, detectives on behalf of the Cologne public prosecutor’s office confiscated and searched the mailbox of Scholz’s longtime confidante Jeanette Schwamberger this spring.
According to the investigators’ note, an e-mail from April 2021 was “potentially relevant to evidence” because it “suggested that data was being deleted”. The message is said to be related to the questioning of Scholz by the Cum-ex investigation committee of the Hamburg Parliament, the content is about meetings with Warburg bankers in autumn 2016. In addition, the “Stern” quotes from a previously confidential statement by Scholz before the Finance Committee of the Bundestag. It should contain contradictions to his statements in Hamburg.
Scholz informed the NDR that he was “neither involved in the calendar query nor in the sending of the calendar excerpts”. That’s what Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD), current chancellery minister, and Schwamberger would have taken care of.
When asked by journalists, a government spokesman in Berlin said on Wednesday that Schwamberger had been head of a sub-department in the Federal Ministry of Finance in spring 2021 and not Scholz’s office manager. He referred to Scholz’ appearance before the investigative committee in Hamburg. All questions would be asked there next Friday, and the Federal Chancellor would answer them.