The Hamburg Attorney General’s Office sees no reason to suspect that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was involved in tax evasion in the case of a tax scandal involving the Hamburg bank MMWarburg. This was reported on Tuesday, August 16, by Der Tagesspiegel.

As Chief Prosecutor Mia Sperling-Karstens explained, the Attorney General’s Office rejected the attorney’s complaint about the refusal to prosecute. In February, Hamburg lawyer Gerhard Strate filed a complaint “on suspicion of aiding tax evasion” against Olaf Scholz, Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher, and several others. At this stage, the Prosecutor General’s Office rejected the statement as “unfounded”, thus confirming the decision of the Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office, which previously refused to initiate criminal proceedings.

The Prosecutor General’s denial said that “there were not sufficient factual grounds to suspect that the alleged tax evasion by the MMWarburg bank was intentionally or voluntarily encouraged by responsible persons in Hamburg’s financial administration”.

The issue of political influence on tax structures

In 2016, the Hamburg tax authorities waived a €47 million refund claim from MMWarburg in relation to cum-ex transactions. At that time, Scholz served as the mayor of this city. Investigators were investigating whether there was political influence on tax structures.

The cum-ex scam involves a series of criminal cases being investigated by the Cologne prosecutor. In early August, investigators found 214,800 euros in one of the vaults of the Hamburg bank MMWarburg, whose management is also suspected of involvement in the scandal. The safe’s owner turned out to be former Bundestag member Johannes Kars (Johannes Kars), who the investigation suspects of mediating to facilitate tax evasion.

In 2016, Kars hosted a meeting of the bank’s shareholders with the then mayor of Hamburg and the current Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz. At that time, the managing directors of the financial institution were under investigation. The Hamburg tax authorities demanded that the bank return €47 million in taxes on cum-ex transactions. But a few days later they suddenly refused to charge.

He was silent about the meeting with the bank’s management

The decision aroused interest not only from the Public Ministry, but also from the local opposition, which launched a parliamentary investigation. In the course of the process, it was discovered that Scholz kept silent about the meeting with the bank’s management precisely on those days when the municipal tax authorities demanded a refund of taxes. Scholz admitted to only one meeting at first, then two more. He was forced to do so by journal entries of the MMWarburg co-founder, which reached investigators during one of the searches.

At the same time, Scholz categorically denied his influence on the decision of the tax authorities. “That would be political stupidity, and I am not inclined towards stupidity,” the leader of the Social Democrats said in April 2021, speaking to members of the parliamentary committee investigating the MMWarburg case. He then claimed that he allegedly did not remember the details of the meetings.

Fraudulent scheme cum-ex – speculation on dividend tax, as a result of which the treasury lost, according to experts, several billion dollars.