Tax officer in focus: tax return from Schwesig's climate protection foundation burned?

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania supported the construction of Nord Stream 2 with a foundation. Last April, the foundation said important tax returns had been lost. Now a report suggests that a tax officer destroyed the papers.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig is threatened with new adversity because of the fuss about her controversial climate protection foundation. A tax officer is said to have burned at least one tax return from the MV Foundation in a fireplace after the documents were considered lost and the authority came under political pressure. This is reported by the magazine “Cicero”. Accordingly, the document is a gift from the Russian gas company Gazprom to the foundation, which caused a stir last April.

According to the information, Gazprom donated 20 million euros to the foundation, half of which should actually have been paid as gift tax. However, in April 2022 it turned out that this had not happened until then. At that time, according to “Cicero”, the foundation stated that it had submitted the necessary tax returns. However, the tax office lost the documents.

After the pressure increased due to the missing tax return, the responsible tax office initiated an investigation. The officer in charge is said to have stated that she was not in possession of the tax returns. Later, the woman is said to have found the papers in her office. “Out of panic” she then destroyed at least one of the two original documents in a friend’s fireplace, reports “Cicero”, citing the Stralsund public prosecutor’s office. Schwesig’s state government in the person of the Ministry of Justice Jacqueline Bernhardt is said to have been informed about the process.

The foundation was set up by the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in early 2021 to promote climate protection and at the same time to actively support the completion of the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Critics speak of a sham foundation in which climate protection was only intended to cloak the actual purpose of completing the gas pipeline while circumventing the threat of US sanctions.

Nord Stream 2 was finally completed in 2021, but did not receive an operating permit from the German authorities because of the Russian attack on Ukraine. A special committee of the state parliament is dealing with the circumstances of the establishment of the foundation and its work under Prime Minister Schwesig.