The affair surrounding the Hamburg banking house Warburg, which was involved in illegal cum-ex transactions, does not let go of the Chancellor. A book that is now being published addresses the question of whether Scholz prevented tax refunds as mayor – and is still untrue about it to this day.
Two books have been published about Olaf Scholz since the SPD’s election victory last year, but neither of the two is even remotely as dangerous for the Chancellor as “The Scholz Files” by Oliver Schröm and Oliver Hollenstein, which is coming to bookstores this Tuesday . The subtitle “The Chancellor, the money and the power” and the gloomy portrait on the cover promise a tell-all book about the man who has ruled the country for almost ten months. And that’s what it is, at least for the people who didn’t have the leisure in the years overshadowed by the pandemic and Russia’s war of aggression to follow a very complicated political affair in Hamburg in all its facets: the gentle, possibly politically controlled handling of it Bankhaus Warburg involved in illegal cum-ex transactions.
The fact that the book lives up to its title is thanks to a trick: the focus is on the processing of the Hamburg cum-ex scandal, in which Scholz is just one of many actors. At the same time, the story of Scholz’ great leap towards the chancellorship is told, the decisive phase of which coincides with the Warburg affair. In the book, the authors condense their own research from the past three years and the findings of other investigative journalists in order to provide answers to two important questions: During his time as Mayor of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, did Olaf Scholz campaign for the bank and its extremely wealthy owners Christian Olearius and Max Warburg are spared tax refunds? And has he deliberately misled parliaments and the public about his role in this affair in recent years?
So much in advance: At the end of the easily readable 392 pages, which are also accessible to an audience that has no idea about stock deals and tax law, the reader has to make his own judgment. But Schröm and Hollenstein’s account – facts, indications and the way they are presented – hardly allows any other conclusion than “probably yes”. Oliver Schröm has not only made a name for himself as an investigative journalist since the cum-ex scandal became known, in which banks with stock transactions that were opaque to the tax authorities stole billions in completely unearned tax refunds. Hollenstein is editor-in-chief of “Manager Magazin”.
In the best sense of the word, Schröm bit his teeth into the story about the city of Hamburg, which in the Warburg case absolutely wanted to forgo the reclaim of these unjustified reimbursements amounting to hundreds of millions. In the ZDF program “Lanz”, “Stern” editor-in-chief Gregor Peter Schmitz recently reported that Schröm was personally discredited from those close to the Chancellery. What was unmistakably meant was the head of the Chancellery, Wolfgang Schmidt, who plays a key role in the “Scholz Files” as a loyal spin doctor who is trying to actively influence media reporting – not only, but especially in the processing of the Warburg scandal.
It’s a tough fight, because so much is also made clear in the book: the authors think little of Scholz, whom they portray as a tough and autocratic power politician. “Scholz thinks most people are either stupid or corrupt,” is one of several negative characterizations made by Schröm and Hollenstein. But when it comes to the question of whether Scholz, as Hamburg’s mayor, together with his successor and former finance senator, actively influenced the decisions of the tax authorities, the two cannot come up with any news.
That doesn’t make reading any less disturbing, because what happened there under Scholz’s aegis in Hamburg – with or without his knowledge – is more than questionable. In April 2016, Hamburg’s tax authority, which is responsible for large companies, decided to recover 93.4 million euros plus interest from the venerable bank, which had been wrongly paid to the bank. If the authority does not take action, there is a risk that access to 47 million euros will become statute-barred at the turn of the year. Of the 169 million euros in tax money that Warburg is said to have stolen between 2007 and 2011, according to auditors, a large part of the statute of limitations has already expired at this point.
But in the summer, the senior auditor responsible begins to reconsider her assessment of the legal feasibility of the reclaims. Instead, a close exchange of information develops between her and the bank, which is more like cooperation on the matter. Alarmed and informed by the official, Christian Olearius, one of the most dazzling and influential figures in Hamburg’s high society, becomes active with Warburg’s largest shareholder, Christian Olearius. He brings in the former deputy mayor Alfons Pawelczyk as an advisor, who is well networked in the city and the SPD and is supposed to work with Scholz in particular with his direct access to the mayor. The SPD member of the Bundestag and budget politician Johannes Kahrs is meanwhile lobbying for Warburg in Berlin – the Johannes Kahrs, in whose locker more than 200,000 euros were later found.
Scholz received Olearius at least three times in the town hall in 2016 and 2017, twice without further witnesses and written notes on the content of the conversation. The two meetings in autumn 2016 coincided with the weeks in which the tax authorities surprisingly decided to waive the reclaims. Scholz even called Olearius personally and recommended that he send a letter of defense he had brought with him to the meeting with Scholz directly to Senator for Finance Tschentscher. He forwards the paper labeled with his senator notes to the tax authorities. For the authors, this process alone is proof that from this point on tax officials should no longer make any decisions without consulting the political leadership.
At the beginning of 2017, when the story seemed to be happily settled for the bank and Olearius and Warburg and its owners were considering the Hamburg SPD with a total of 45,500 euros in donations, it was senior officials in the Federal Ministry of Finance who got wind of Hamburg’s unusual waiver. In an extremely rare event, they instruct their colleagues in the city-state twice to finally take action so that no more claims become statute-barred. The Hamburg tax office justifies its own reluctance with the concern that the bank, which is important for Hamburg, could go bankrupt, and sometimes with the fear of lawsuits from Warburg – which is considered unfounded in Berlin and in most other federal states that process comparable cases.
These events might never have become public if the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, which investigated several cum-ex cases, hadn’t found Olearius’ diaries in which he recorded the meetings with Scholz and the roles of Kahrs and Pawelczyk in detail. Schröm and Hollenstein rely heavily on these diaries and other investigative files of the people of Cologne, which they were able to inspect. Since then, there have been questions about what Olearius could have discussed with Scholz, whether he could have persuaded the then mayor to intervene in Warburg’s favor and why Scholz himself had met Olearius in 2017, when he had long been at the center of an investigation.
Olaf Scholz could have clarified all of this early and quickly. After all, as Federal Minister of Finance he had repeatedly condemned cum-ex transactions and – in preparation for his own candidacy for chancellor – staged himself as a pioneer for tax justice. Instead, Scholz only admitted the meetings and the call to Olearius when Schröm, Hollenstein and other journalists from “Panorama”, “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and “Zeit” made them public. He had previously left open questions from Hamburg MPs and members of the Finance Committee of the Bundestag about such direct contacts and later explained this with gaps in memory and incomplete appointment calendars.
In addition, Tschentscher, the Hamburg tax authority and the Federal Ministry of Finance, which Scholz has headed since 2019, have not shown any interest in proactive clarification. On the contrary: Schröm and Hollenstein show suspicions of intentional deletion processes as well as repeated attempts by Scholz’s confidante Schmidt to influence the reporting. The fact that the top tax officer in the Federal Ministry of Finance, who had repeatedly instructed the people of Hamburg to finally take action, surprisingly took early retirement just after Scholz’s appointment as Federal Finance Minister, has a “taste” for the authors. Warburg and Olearius had openly threatened the official with their direct contacts with Scholz if the man did not give in.
Scholz speaks of “unfounded horror stories” and still maintains that although he can’t remember everything, he has by no means done anything wrong. Schröm and Hollenstein cannot prove that either. Where the smoking gun, the conclusive evidence is missing, the authors weave in the image of a politician who is power-oriented, opinionated and cunning. A politician who has already had numerous other affairs that others would have tripped over, and who has nevertheless developed the image of the most serious bore. The book gives little hope that Scholz can still be proven to have directly interfered with written evidence. The Chancellor may have been too clever for that. The authors have just as little hope that Germany’s head of government is too honest to dispel this serious suspicion based solely on his strength of character.
