Warburg Bank tax scandal
Union also aims at Chancellor Schmidt
04/07/2023 09:28 am
For the Union, Chancellor Schmidt is the central figure “in the Scholz system”. That’s why the planned Bundestag committee of inquiry into the Warburg Bank tax scandal should also be about Schmidt and his attempts to influence the media.
In the planned committee of inquiry of the German Bundestag into the role of Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the tax scandal involving the Hamburg Warburg Bank, the Union apparently also wants to target Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt. “Wolfgang Schmidt is a central figure in the Scholz system,” said CDU member of the Bundestag Matthias Hauer of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. As his closest political confidant, he is closer to the Chancellor than almost anyone else.
The investigative committee initiated by the Union should primarily shed light on how SPD politician Scholz and his environment dealt with the Warburg tax affair at the federal level, emphasized the financial politician. It is also about Schmidt’s attempts to influence media reporting in the background. “Especially Mr. Schmidt’s media contacts in the Warburg tax affair raise considerable questions, which we will investigate in the committee of inquiry,” said Hauer.
Even as head of the Chancellery, SPD politician Schmidt tried to convince journalists that there had been no political influence whatsoever on the decision not to initially reclaim around 47 million euros in tax refunds from the bank in 2016 because of fraud through so-called cum-ex transactions . Shortly before this decision, the then Mayor Scholz had met the Warburg banker Christian Olearius for a third time, but cites gaps in memory as to the content of the talks.
When another 43 million euros for 2017 should not be reclaimed, the Federal Ministry of Finance issued the instruction that the money had to be reclaimed. In March 2020, the Bonn Regional Court ordered Warburg-Bank to repay around 176.5 million euros, including for previous years.
Allegations of discrediting journalists
The administrative court in Berlin recently ruled that the chancellery must provide information on communication with the media in connection with the case. Schmidt should also clarify whether he tried to portray an author who wrote a book on the “Scholz Files” as untrustworthy to the press. “In particular, the accusation of discrediting journalists weighs heavily,” Hauer told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. In addition, it must be clarified whether Schmidt passed on a protocol of the Finance Committee of the Bundestag, which was classified as secret at the time, and which dealt with the Warburg case and the Scholz meetings.
The Cum-Ex affair is one of the biggest tax scandals in Germany and is being legally processed. Investors and banks had had capital gains tax reimbursed by the financial authorities with a sophisticated confusing game, which was never paid.