SPD candidate for chancellor: What's the truth about the accusations against Olaf Scholz?

Marc Widmann, Jurik Caspar Iser, Karsten Polke-Majewski, Tina Groll 9 hours ago. | Wirecard, Cum-Ex, G20 and now a raid on the Ministry of Finance: In the election campaign's final phase, Olaf Scholz is confronted with several affairs. What you should know. Many of the accusations against Scholz are complex - which is helpful for him in the election campaign. Serious and experienced in leadership - this is the image with which SPD man Olaf Scholz is working to win the election. But his critics accuse him of failure and cronyism in Wirecard, Cum-Ex, G20 and a lack of action against money laundering. What is true? And which accusation could he dispel? An overview Olaf Scholz and the Cum-Ex banker The Cum-Ex crime - the theft of many billions of euros in tax revenues through illegal stock transactions - has many perpetrators. That it became possible is the responsibility of federal governments that have long since ceased to exist. One part of this scandal, however, takes place in Hamburg and continues to have an impact to this day. There, in 2016 and 2017, the tax office wanted to allow Warburg Bank, based in the Hanseatic city, to keep many millions of euros that had been wrongly refunded. This was finally prevented in 2017 by an instruction from the German Federal Ministry of Finance (a detailed account of the context can be found here). Olaf Scholz was mayor of Hamburg at the time. And he met several times at the time with the alleged perpetrator, the then head of Warburg Bank Christian Olearius. Scholz's calendar proves this, he confirmed it himself, and it can also be read in Olearius's diary. The banker, as his lawyers told the investigating committee, wanted to avert demands for repayment from the bank with the help of the mayor. The Hamburg authorities knew about the Cum-Ex suspicion against Warburg, Scholz had talked about it with experts of his administration before the meetings with Olearius. It was also known that there had already been a search at the bank. Scholz nevertheless met with the banker. Olearius brought a letter with his view of things to one of the meetings. Scholz himself had said that he should send it without comment to the then Finance Senator and now SPD Mayor Peter Tschentscher. With this advice, Scholz specially called Olearius again. The question the investigative committee is now dealing with is: Was there any political influence on the actions of the tax office in the Warburg case? Scholz rejects this. He had only referred Olearius to the official channels. Incidentally, Scholz told the committee, he had practically no recollection of the discussions with Olearius. Is that credible? After all, Scholz met a banker who wanted to secure earnings from allegedly criminal transactions that Scholz knew about at the time. No proof that there was any influence has yet been found. But there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that at least raises questions: The Finance Senator passed the Olearius letter on to his subordinates at the time with marginal notes that at least emphasized the importance of the transaction. The subordinates had already compiled arguments for a decision against the bank, but did not represent this position to the responsible tax office, which had to decide on the matter. The tax office ultimately made the bank-friendly decision, probably also under the impression that the bank's existence could be endangered by a contrary decision. In the end, the Hamburg tax authorities were very accommodating to the cum-ex banker, further than it was handled in similar cases in other federal states. Further also, than it the Federal Ministry of Finance finally permitted. Last Friday (Sept. 10), Wirtschaftswoche reported that the Federal Ministry of Finance, now led by Olaf Scholz, had ensured that the minutes of a meeting of the Bundestag's Finance Committee remained blocked - even though the majority of committee members wanted to see them published. It concerns the meeting of July 1, 2020, in which Scholz had been questioned about the Cum-Ex scandal. It is not clear why the minister, who says of himself that he has nothing to reproach himself for, is blocking himself. (Karsten Polke-Majewski) Blinded by Wirecard The Wirecard case goes down as probably the biggest financial scandal in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The former Dax group had admitted in June 2020 that there was no evidence for the existence of 1.9 billion euros in alleged company funds and filed for insolvency. Numerous investors lost their savings.