CUM-EX TAX SCANDAL - Scholz has files blocked that could be dangerous to him

CUM-EX TAX SCANDAL - Scholz has files blocked that could be dangerous to him by Christian Ramthun September 10, 2021 Whether Olaf Scholz, as Hamburg's first mayor, had any influence on the Cum-Ex affair is written in a protocol that he is having declared a secret classified matter. The Finance Committee wants to publish the minutes of a questioning of Scholz. But his ministry wants to thoroughly examine a release of the classified information first. It's a tried-and-true method in politics: first deny, then declaim memory lapses. Olaf Scholz adds another twist to this political discipline of how best to deal with scandals: do what ultimately has to be said behind closed doors and then have the minutes declared a classified matter. This is how the German finance minister has so far managed to maneuver through the Cum-Ex affair involving Warburg Bank. The question is whether Scholz, during his time as mayor of Hamburg, may have had an influence on the fact that the local tax office allowed tax refund claims of 47 million euros to lapse in 2016. Now, however, Scholz is threatened with trouble after all. Most members of the Bundestag Finance Committee want to achieve a publication of the minutes of a questioning of Olaf Scholz on the Cum-Ex scandal from July 1, 2020. The push was triggered by a report in WirtschaftsWoche that, according to the Federal Ministry of Finance, the decision to maintain secrecy was a matter for parliament. In fact, the ministry had told WirtschaftsWoche in response to a query: "The decision to hold a secret meeting of the Bundestag Finance Committee is the responsibility of the German Bundestag; this also applies to the handling of documents classified by the Bundestag." This in turn surprised various members of the Finance Committee across party lines from Lisa Paus (Greens) to Fabio De Masi (Left) to committee chair Katja Hessel (FDP) herself. Since then, most committee members have been trying to have the Scholz protocol degraded, as the technical term goes. On behalf of the Left Party, its chairman on the Finance Committee, Stefan Liebich, sent an e-mail to committee chairwoman Hessel on September 3 requesting that the minutes be degraded. The parliamentary machinery was then set in motion. The committee secretariat asked on Monday on behalf of Hessel the Ministry of Finance officially to examine whether there were objections against a degradation of the Scholz protocol. Possible objections - after all, the Cum-Ex scandal involves tax-relevant data - could be met, the secretariat suggested obligingly, by blacking out the text, if necessary. The parliamentary secretariat set Wednesday, September 8, as the deadline for a response from the ministry. Time-consuming, legally complex Actually, the ministry could have answered quickly - as it did with the WirtschaftsWoche inquiry a week earlier. But things turned out differently. Scholz' head of the cabinet department in the ministry informed the committee by telephone on Wednesday that the audit was very time-consuming, legally complex and therefore not yet completed. Both Tax Department IV and, for the constitutional issues, Department V of the BMF would have to be involved in the audit. This reduces the likelihood that the public will possibly learn news about what Scholz really knew or concealed in the Cum-Ex affair before the Bundestag elections on September 26, 2021. Friedrich Merz calls the SPD candidate for chancellor Olaf Scholz untrustworthy and unsuitable. The economic expert of the CDU/CSU refers to his role in the Cum-Ex tax evasion scandal. By Cordula Tutt "Little surprising, but meanwhile brazen," says Green Party politician Paus: The Federal Ministry of Finance continues to stonewall and try to delay the publication of the secret minutes of the hearing of Mr. Scholz in the Warburg Bank case in the Finance Committee. Paus speaks of the "Scholz method: publicly announcing complete transparency, but then doing the exact opposite. Sit out where and when possible." Scholz hides behind tax secrecy primarily for political reasons. In the meantime, everyone knows that the Warburg Bank and 47 million euros in capital gains tax from cum-ex transactions are at stake. "What's the point of being so secretive?" De Masi of the Left Party, who has already made a name for himself in the Bundestag's Wirecard Investigation Committee, also urges transparency. "What's with all the secrecy?" asks the financial politician.