Schwerin (dpa/mv) – The destruction of tax returns from the MV climate foundation by an employee of the Ribnitz-Damgarten tax office was reported to the parliamentary committee of inquiry shortly before Christmas 2022, according to the Ministry of Finance. The ministry said this at the request of the German Press Agency on Friday. The head of the tax office had already filed a complaint with the Stralsund public prosecutor’s office seven months earlier.
According to the investigators, an employee of the tax office burned the foundation’s tax files in a knee-jerk reaction after realizing that she had been processing them for some time. A feverish search had been made for the documents. The woman revealed herself to her manager, who reported the incident. The proceedings against her were discontinued in autumn 2022 against a payment of money.
The opposition Greens have now accused Finance Minister Heiko Geue (SPD) and Justice Minister Jacqueline Bernhardt (left) of having known about the incident since the beginning of May, but not having informed Parliament and the public. For months, the political public had puzzled over where the tax documents might have gone.
The group leader of the Greens in the state parliament, Harald Terpe, explained that the Ministry of Finance had informed the Finance Committee in mid-May that there was no information about lost or missing tax documents. In October, the state government refused to provide information on the whereabouts of the files, citing tax secrecy.
The foundation is to pay 9.8 million euros in gift tax for 20 million euros in capital from Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2. The foundation, on the other hand, has gone to court, the proceedings are still ongoing.
The Ministry of Finance reaffirmed on Friday that it had been prevented from commenting on the destruction of the tax returns until the allegations made in the media about tax secrecy and the employee’s personal rights became known. The notification of December 22, 2022 to the committee of inquiry was possible because the committee was obliged to maintain confidentiality.
