Karlsruhe rejects the application
Cum-ex string puller Hanno Berger fails with complaint
February 27, 2024, 11:37 a.m
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In Germany, the legal end of the road has been reached for Hanno Berger: the Federal Constitutional Court has rejected his appeal against his prison sentence for tax evasion. He should be behind bars for eight years for cum-ex dealings. Unless Strasbourg hears him.
The cum-ex architect Hanno Berger also failed before the Federal Constitutional Court in his fight against a long prison sentence for serious tax evasion. The highest German court in Karlsruhe announced that a constitutional complaint from Berger had not been accepted for decision. “The constitutional complaint is inadmissible because it has not been adequately justified.” The decision is final.
In December 2022, the Bonn regional court sentenced Berger to eight years in prison for three cases of particularly serious tax evasion. Berger’s defense attorney wanted to overturn the verdict because of alleged procedural errors, but the Federal Court of Justice rejected the appeal in the fall. Berger filed a constitutional complaint against this with the Federal Constitutional Court.
With the defeat in Karlsruhe, his legal options in Germany have now been exhausted; all that remains is to go to the European Court of Human Rights. Berger is said to have been the driving force behind the cum-ex stock transactions in Germany, which are said to have cost the tax authorities at least ten billion euros.
In the tax deals, shares with (“cum”) and without (“ex”) dividend claims were moved back and forth between investors. At the end of the confusion, the tax authorities refunded taxes that had not been paid. For a long time it was unclear whether cum-ex deals were illegal. The tax loophole was only closed in 2012. In 2021, the Federal Court of Justice decided that the transactions should be viewed as tax evasion.