“We are extremely surprised”
Seized laptops disappeared in the Cum-Ex case
November 3, 2023, 6:07 a.m
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In Hamburg, an investigative committee wants to investigate the cum-ex scandal. But now the committee is apparently missing two seized laptops with hundreds of thousands of emails. Of all people, the chief investigator of the affair is said to have taken the evidence.
According to a media report, two laptops with more than 700,000 emails disappeared from the Hamburg investigative committee into the so-called Cum-Ex affair. Again “Star” and the “Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” (WAZ) report that the chief investigator Steffen Jänicke, appointed by the SPD, is said to have removed and hidden the sensitive evidence from the safe in the investigative committee’s security room. The missing emails are said to include mailboxes belonging to Olaf Scholz’s office manager Jeanette Schwamberger, Hamburg’s First Mayor Peter Tschentscher and other top officials.
The members of the investigative committee hope that the evidence will provide new insights into the role of Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the cum-ex affair of the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg. After months of tug-of-war, the Ministry of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia sent the laptops with the emails that were seized as part of the Cum-Ex investigation to Hamburg at the beginning of October.
Did Jänicke violate any rules?
“We don’t know where the devices are and whether they are safe at that location,” criticized Richard Seelmaecker, CDU chairman of the Hamburg investigative committee. According to research by “Stern” and “WAZ”, Jänicke removed the laptops from the safe in the committee’s strictly secured file room.
It is therefore unclear where Jänicke took the laptops. The question is whether he violated the committee’s confidentiality rules. They say: “The files and other documents must be stored in file and reading rooms in the respective building to be determined by the working staff.” It is also unclear why he removed the laptops from the safe – only selected members of the team have access to it anyway.
“We are extremely surprised at this handling of sensitive data,” said Left chairman Norbert Hackbusch, according to the report. When asked, committee chairman Mathias Petersen from the SPD assured that the laptops would be stored “in the working staff in compliance with secrecy regulations.” Jänicke did not comment when asked.