Fabio de Masi in “Early Start”
“Scholz will not survive the legislative period”
08/19/2022, 11:28 am
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dribbled and is not credible. This is how the former Left MP de Masi judged the actions of the SPD politician in the Cum-Ex affair. It is questionable whether those who are being investigated will protect him for a long time to come.
Financial expert and former Left MP Fabio de Masi assumes that Chancellor Olaf Scholz will not survive the full legislative period because of the Cum-Ex scandal. “I don’t think so,” he said in “ntv Frühstart”. Public prosecutors were investigating various people, such as Christian Olearius, the former member of the Warburg Bank supervisory board. “They did criminal things, but they are not stupid, they will certainly sing something in court and will not continue to protect Mr. Scholz if they get prison relief for it.”
In addition to Olearius, de Masi believes that the tax officer, on whom politicians are trying to push everything, could also unpack. “I don’t think that a single official made this decision to the detriment of her own city, costing many millions of euros, without political backing.”
At this point in time, de Masi is not calling for the Chancellor to resign. It is documented in black and white that Scholz lied to the Bundestag. But he only calls for his resignation if Olaf Scholz is investigated. “The impacts are getting closer, first of all I want to have clarity in this affair.”
De Masi does not believe the Chancellor’s alleged memory gaps. “Scholz has apparently lost track, dribbled himself out with his different versions and variants,” said de Masi.
According to “Stern”, Scholz did comment on a meeting with Olearius at a confidential meeting of the finance committee, but later claimed that he had no memory of the meeting. “He got stuck in there and thought, ‘I can get away with it’ and now he can’t get out of it.” Scholz can’t suddenly say “my memory is back”.
It is also striking that the Chancellor can remember things that are less important, such as sitting next to Mr. Olearius in the Elbphilharmonie. “He always has precise amnesia when it comes to Cum-Ex and Warburg.”
“Kahrs was always there where there was dirty money”
De Masi is not surprised that the former influential SPD member of parliament Johannes Kahrs is under investigation. “Kahrs was everywhere there was dirty money, so it’s no coincidence that he’s in that story,” de Masi said. Only recently it became known that more than 200,000 euros had been discovered in Kahrs’ safe deposit box. “I don’t know where this cash in the safe deposit box came from, because he would have had to explain the origin of the bank if he had deposited it in the account,” said de Masi. However, it is known that Kahrs collected party donations from the Warburg Bank, which have not been repaid to this day.
The diaries of former Warburg supervisory board member Christian Olearius reveal that Kahrs was supposed to prepare the banker for talks with the then mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz. At the Chancellor’s summer press conference, Scholz was specifically asked about meetings with Johannes Kahrs. However, Scholz did not want to comment further.
The Federal Chancellor is accused of having campaigned for the Warburg Bank during his time as the first mayor of Hamburg, which was threatened with high back payments after a fraud involving millions. So far, Scholz has not been able to prove any personal influence.