Chancellor Olaf Scholz once again rejected any influence on the tax proceedings of the Warburg Bank, which was involved in the Cum-Ex scandal, before the investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament. “I had no influence on the Warburg tax procedure,” said the former mayor of Hamburg on Friday during his second hearing before the committee. The core of the committee is the question of whether he or other leading SPD politicians have influenced the tax treatment of the bank.
The background to this are three meetings between Scholz – who was still the mayor of Hamburg at the time – and the shareholders of Warburg Bank, Christian Olearius and Max Warburg, in 2016 and 2017. After the first meeting, the Hamburg tax authorities had reclaims of wrongly refunded capital gains tax amounting to 47 Millions of euros against the bank initially statute-barred. 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 of the conversation. That is still the case, said the Chancellor. However, the committee’s investigations since then have confirmed exactly what he said at the time: “There has been no political interference whatsoever.” Allegations to the contrary were “supported by nothing and nobody” during the surveys. Scholz pointed out that tax evasion is not a “trivial offence”. He’s always seen it that way. That’s another reason why it’s clear: “There was no preferential treatment for Mr. Warburg or Mr. Olearius.”