On Friday, Olaf Scholz has to answer questions from the investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament about Cum-Ex. But the Finance Committee of the Bundestag is also interested in the events surrounding the Hamburg Warburg Bank. The Union may want to summon the Chancellor again.
Because of the cum-ex scandal at Hamburg’s Warburg Bank, the Union is considering asking Chancellor Olaf Scholz again in the Bundestag’s finance committee. Union faction deputy Mathias Middelberg told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (NOZ) that he would follow the Chancellor’s statement in the parliamentary investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament on Friday “with great attention”. “Depending on the quality and credibility of the statement, we will decide whether Olaf Scholz should also be invited to the Finance Committee of the German Bundestag for questioning,” Middelberg said.
The federal government is affected because the Warburg case was about the implementation of federal law and also about federal tax claims. The CDU politician sharply criticized Scholz in the NOZ. “The chancellor gives the wrong impression when he explains in his summer press conference that after two and a half years of research there is ‘not a single indication’ that politics influenced the decision,” said Middelberg. “On the contrary, in the last few days alone, there have been increasing indications that political influence was exerted on the Hamburg Warburg Bank scandal.”
In 2016, the Hamburg tax authorities waived a reclaim of 47 million euros from the Warburg Bank in connection with so-called cum-ex transactions. Scholz was the first mayor of the Hanseatic city at the time. The question is whether political influence was exerted on the decision.
So-called cum-ex deals refer to moving shares around a dividend record date in order to get a refund of capital gains tax that was not paid. The state has lost billions as a result of these practices by banks. Most recently, “Stern” and NDR reported that the e-mails of Scholz’s office manager, Jeanette Schwamberger, were searched in connection with the Cum-Ex scandal in April. The corresponding search warrant came from the District Court of Cologne. The public prosecutor’s office classified one of the messages as “potentially relevant evidence” because it “suggests considerations about deleting data”. The “Stern” also quoted confidential documents about Scholz’s previous parliamentary hearings, which indicated contradictory statements. It is about meetings with the long-standing chairman of the supervisory board of the Warburg-Bank, Christian Olearius.
