There was also nothing new in the second hearing of the Chancellor. Critical voices are increasing, that is unbelievable.
Didn’t remember anything on Friday either: Chancellor Olaf Scholz before the Hamburg committee of inquiry into the Cum-Ex tax scandal.
Olaf Scholz had a bad week. First he got a rebuff in Norway, which concerns additional gas deliveries. Then he didn’t switch when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a comparison to the Holocaust, and as a result he was exposed to massive criticism. Then he allowed himself to be insulted by angry citizens in Neuruppin. And Friday at 2 p.m., when others are slowly heading into the weekend, Scholz had to testify again as a witness before the Hamburg investigative committee on the Cum-Ex tax scandal.
There, however, Scholz made things easy for himself, because he said the same thing as always: There was no political influence, he could not remember the content of the conversation. The central question was again whether he or other leading SPD politicians had any influence on the tax treatment of the Warburg Bank involved in the scandal. Scholz denies this.
In the committee, it only takes a few minutes for him to repeat what he said during his first interrogation in April last year. “I had no influence on the Warburg tax process.” Cum-ex deals are tax fraud, and he has campaigned for a fair tax system all his life.
“Therefore I ask you”. – “I do not want.”
The background to the allegations by the opposition are three meetings between Scholz and the shareholders of Warburg Bank, Christian Olearius and Max Warburg, in 2016 and 2017. After the first meeting, the Hamburg tax authorities had to reclaim wrongly refunded capital gains tax, despite originally having different plans of 47 million euros against the bank. Another 43 million euros were reclaimed a year later, shortly before the statute of limitations expired and on the instructions of the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Scholz admitted to the meetings during his first interrogation in April last year, but stated that he could no longer remember the content. That is still the case, says the Chancellor. At the same time, he emphasized that he considers meetings between the mayor and bankers to be appropriate. In addition, the committee investigations have since confirmed what he said at the time: “There has been no political interference.”
Scholz rejects the question from the CDU MP Götz Wiese as to whether his advice to Olearius was an influence to send a letter on the situation of the bank to the then finance senator and current mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD). “Can you justify that?” Wiese asks. “I don’t have to,” Scholz replies. “I’m asking you,” Wiese asks. “I don’t want to,” replies Scholz.
Kahrs remains silent
As in April, the MPs are finding it extremely difficult to deal with the witness Scholz. They question him again and again and they always get the same answers: he can’t remember, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. Again and again: “It makes no sense if we speculate here together.”
But it is clear: “There was no preferential treatment for Mr. Warburg or Mr. Olearius.” Scholz also emphasizes: “The Free and Hanseatic City has not suffered any financial damage in this matter.” The tax debts had been reclaimed and paid – however, in 2016 it was not yet clear that this was possible. The repayment was only made later after a corresponding court decision and Warburg Bank is still taking legal action against it.
The meetings between Scholz and Olearius are said to have been initiated by the then SPD member of the Bundestag Johannes Kahrs and the former SPD Interior Senator Alfons Pawelczyk. According to members of the Hamburg investigative committee, investigation files show that more than 200,000 euros in cash were found in a Kahrs safe deposit box. Scholz says he doesn’t know about the locker, what’s in it, or where the money came from. Kahrs, who is being investigated for aiding and abetting tax evasion, has so far remained silent about the origin of the money.
CDU and Linke want to hear Scholz a third time and expand the committee’s investigation mandate to include the cum-ex transactions of the former Landesbank HSH Nordbank. Then the head of the Chancellor’s office, Wolfgang Schmidt, who has been Chancellor Scholz’s intimate friend for many years, should also be summoned. The disclosure of the results of the investigation by the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, which is investigating the Warburg Bank’s cum-ex transactions, and press reports on previously kept secret minutes of a statement by Scholz in 2020 before the Finance Committee of the Bundestag have given rise to many new questions.
With agency material