Admin I Monday, Sept. 18, 2023
BERLIN – Another criminal trial in Germany’s massive Cum-Ex tax scandal is set to kick off on Monday in the western city of Bonn, this time against a former banker of the Warburg private bank.
As a personally liable partner of the Hamburg-based bank, Christian Olearius faces 14 charges, which, according to the prosecutors’ estimates, resulted in total tax losses of €280 million ($299 million).
The bank was involved in the notorious Cum-Ex scheme, which saw traders in Europe use a legal loophole to shift shares back and forth at high speed between parties around the time dividends were paid, in order to receive reimbursements for taxes they had not actually paid.
The 81-year-old faces up to 10 years in prison. He has always denied the charges in the past, but according to his press spokesman, he did not want to comment on them before the start of the trial.
Thirteen counts of the indictment deal with Cum-Ex offences in the period from 2006 to 2011. The 14th count, according to the indictment, is about false statements with which Olearius wanted to prevent having to pay a tax refund to the tax office in 2016 and 2017.
In doing so, he also turned to the then mayor of Hamburg and current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. A little later, the tax office actually waived a repayment.
Whether Scholz or others exerted any political influence in the case remains unclear. In a hearing last year, Scholz denied this, but he referred to gaps in his memory regarding the content of the meetings with Olearius.
The Cum-Ex – Latin for “with/without” – scheme syphoned off massive amounts of government revenue over several years.
