interview
According to stern research
De Masi on the cum-ex scandal: “It’s now a state affair”
Fabio De Masi: “This is no longer a normal political struggle, it has a criminal component.”
© Roland Magunia / Imago Images
According to stern information, two laptops were stolen from a safe in the Cum-Ex investigative committee. A monstrous process, says Cum-Ex expert Fabio De Masi in an interview.
Mr. De Masi, according to stern information, the SPD chief investigator in the Cum-Ex affair removed and hid two laptops with more than 700,000 emails from the investigative committee’s safe in Hamburg. It’s about explosive correspondence that should bring new insights into the affair. How can something like this happen?
When I saw that, I thought: It’s a good thing I don’t have an ax in my hand, otherwise I would be chopping wood to relieve myself. Really, this is crazy. The justification for this withdrawal is not clear.
The SPD had complained that there were emails in the mailboxes that were not relevant to the investigation – and which the members of the investigative committee were therefore not allowed to view.
Even if there are emails there that are not part of the investigation, it is not the job of any speaker to sort out these emails. It’s like this: Precisely to protect the data, such a laptop must remain in the classified area. This ensures that no information leaks out. It just doesn’t make sense to take the laptops out of the security room to protect the data.
Steffen Jänicke is the name of the SPD man who is said to have removed the laptops. What does he want to do with this?
There are three options. Firstly, he does not want the representatives of the other factions to have access to the files at this time. Secondly, he wants to remove something. Third, he wants to copy something. None of this is his right.
According to the research, Jänicke actually shouldn’t have had access to the safe and the sensitive data at all. Because of family connections to Russia, the Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution had expressed concerns that he was trustworthy enough to inspect top secret documents.
Yes, where are we? The public prosecutor’s office must investigate here.
Do you have any doubts about that?
She reports to the Green Senator for Justice. The Hamburg public prosecutor’s office never really investigated the entire Cum-Ex case. Here we see the problem of public prosecutors who are bound by political instructions.
Is the data stored elsewhere for security reasons?
The documents are only available on these laptops and at the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, where a case is being investigated. However, when the investigation is complete, the public prosecutor there must delete the documents according to the law. This means: They are only available in Cologne for a certain period of time. If the laptops are resurfaced, it will be important for a data forensics expert to examine whether there is a difference between the documents submitted by the prosecution and those on the laptops. This is the only way to ensure that the documents have not been changed.
How do you assess the latest incident in light of the entire Cum-Ex affair?
In my opinion, there has been proof that Olaf Scholz lied about the Cum-Ex affair. The Chancellor’s “memory gap” is logically impossible, because Scholz confirmed a meeting with him in February 2020 after being confronted with the diaries of the Warburg banker Christian Olearius, even though this meeting was no longer in his calendar. So he must have actively remembered. If communication is also stolen, we are in the area of perverting the law. This is no longer a normal political struggle; it has a criminal component. This is now a state affair.