The public prosecutor’s office in Cologne searches for information from WDR and Süddeutscher Zeitung financial authorities and living spaces in Hamburg. The suspicion: Ex-politicians and civil servants are said to have helped the private bank MM Warburg to keep illegally stolen tax money. The investigations are directed against a tax officer as well as against two former greats of the Hamburg SPD: Johannes Kahrs, once budget spokesman in the Bundestag and the influential “Seeheimer Kreis”, and a former senator from the Hanseatic city of Hamburg.
Two days after the general election, the Hamburg Social Democrats caught up with the “Cum-Ex” scandal, Germany’s largest tax fraud. The suspicion of the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne: The politicians and civil servants are said to have helped the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg that the Hamburg tax authorities did not reclaim 47 million euros in tax money from illegal “cum-ex” transactions at the time. Money that Warburg Bank only paid back after a judgment by the Bonn Regional Court. Anyone who helps a criminal to secure the benefits of an act makes himself liable to prosecution. In the penal code this is recorded as “favoritism” – and is punishable by up to five years imprisonment.
The deputy chairman and financial policy spokesman for the left-wing parliamentary group, Fabio De Masi, comments on the search: “The raid gives Olaf Scholz the lie. In particular, Olaf Scholz’s State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Wolfang Schmidt, has repeatedly publicly claimed that Olaf Scholz would be exonerated by statements made by Hamburg’s tax officials. Now there is a raid on Olaf Scholz’s central exonerating witness. The same applies to Johannes Kahrs. The former SPD member of the Bundestag is always there where money stinks. His job was to lobby Olaf Scholz on behalf of the Warburg Bank. Therefore, with the raid, the scandal is moving closer to the potential Federal Chancellor. As one of my inquiries shows, Johannes Kahrs, Warburg banker Christian Olearius and State Secretary Jörg Kukies had breakfast together after the Warburg affair. ” Likewise, the Ministry of Finance must “finally explain whether it has initiated investigations against Wolfang Schmidt on the allegation of forwarding excerpts from a VS-classified protocol”.
The public prosecutor’s office in Cologne confirmed the searches on request and spoke of an initial suspicion of beneficiary. There are indications of criminally relevant behavior of the accused in connection with cum-ex deals. Since the morning, the corresponding search warrants of the Cologne District Court of September 22, 2021 have been implemented. The authority did not comment on the names of individual participants. The tax authorities and the accused could not be reached so far.
It’s about sums of millions from the treasury that Warburg bankers and their accomplices had reimbursed through cum-ex deals, even though they had never paid the tax before. A handle in the tax bag, for which the Bonn Regional Court sentenced the bank to repay the crime last year. The judgment is now final.
With their search measures, the investigators are now examining the questions that are now occupied by an investigative committee in Hamburg and also accompanied the SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz through his federal election campaign. Have the tax authorities deliberately spared the Hamburg Warburg Bank? And: Did politics help? Scholz and the then Hamburg Senator for Finance and today’s First Mayor Peter Tschentscher have vehemently denied these allegations. Neither is there any investigation against either.
The diaries of Christian Olearius, co-owner of the private bank, gave the investigators the first suspicions about what might have happened behind the scenes after the tax office prepared to reclaim Cum-Ex money from the Warburg Bank in 2016. Investigators from the Rhine had found the diaries during a raid. During the evaluation of the personal notes, the investigators came across an attempt to exert influence on the Hamburg financial administration – using the best political contacts.
The banker recorded in his diary who he had contacted after the first Cum-Ex raid in his bank at the beginning of 2016: the social democrat Kahrs and a former Hamburg senator. Both are said to have signaled their support in the matter. According to the records, the former senator is said to have campaigned for meetings with the then mayor Olaf Scholz. Kahrs, in turn, is said to have tried before the banking supervisory authority Bafin and the Federal Ministry of Finance. However, he was said to have reported at the end of 2016 that it was initially unsuccessful.
Even the best political contacts, it seemed at first, were ineffective. In November 2016, the responsible tax officer at the Hamburg tax office for large companies wrote a 28-page note that the cum-ex funds would have to be reclaimed. Tax auditors at the Warburg Bank had also urgently advised them to do so. But then something strange happened. Only a few days later, after a meeting in the Hamburg Ministry of Finance, the officer deviated from her elaborately reasoned assessment and waived the recovery of the 47 million euros. This U-turn in particular raises questions.
On the one hand, the investigators are investigating the question of whether the tax officer had a personal connection to the bank. The officer denies that.
Finally, the public prosecutor’s office checks whether political influence was the reason for the change of opinion. Because the then Finance Senator Peter Tschentscher had instructed with his green ministerial ink on a document that he wanted to be kept up to date in the Warburg case. Olaf Scholz was also in the picture – as he later gradually admitted to the finance committee. He met Olearius three times, and the tax procedure was also an issue. Scholz and Tschentscher decidedly deny any political influence – as did Olearius. For her part, the tax officer testified that she had never been influenced. The tax office later explained the back and forth by saying that there had been legal uncertainties and major litigation risks.
The public prosecutor’s office in Cologne is apparently questioning the portrayal of the tax officer and the role of Kahrs and the former senator, who are said to have used their contacts to open the doors to the bank.