For years, Hanno Berger hid in the Engadin and was thus able to evade German justice, but now that has come to an end. Switzerland delivers Mr. Cum-Ex, as the Frankfurt tax attorney is called. This is an important, significant signal in one of Germany’s biggest tax scandals. Many banks and financial funds, with the help of shrewd lawyers, have plundered the treasury. Have allegedly stolen more than ten billion euros from the Treasury; Money deposited by others there.
The regional courts in Wiesbaden and Bonn have to clarify whether Hanno Berger acted criminally, whether he and his associates evaded almost 392 million euros in taxes. There, two big charges await the 71-year-old, who, after seven and a half months in custody pending extradition in Switzerland, is now facing many years in prison in Germany. The court decisions remain to be seen, until then the tax attorney must be considered innocent.
But it’s good to know that suspects like Berger are no longer safe in Switzerland. And even more important: the German constitutional state works. Stubborn tax inspectors, detectives, tax investigators and public prosecutors have been investigating this morass for many years and are well on the way to largely draining a swamp that ministers and ministries have made possible.
For a long time, several federal governments and some federal states have watched almost inactively as unscrupulous financial managers and lawyers use a control loophole to enrich themselves from society. In order to be reimbursed for taxes that had not been paid in the case of stock transactions that were difficult to understand. In any case, the Wiesbaden II tax office noticed this – in transactions in which Hanno Berger is said to have been involved.
Ten years ago, a department head in this tax office dismantled the mendacious objections of all those who operated such stock deals in a few simple sentences. The objections were: everyone did it, and politicians are to blame for not closing loopholes in the law. The head of the department replied that there was “no equal treatment in the wrong”. Anyone who breaks the law cannot claim that others are doing the same. And because a law does not effectively prevent cases of abuse, the abuse of control loopholes is far from being permitted.
Oh, if only the then Federal Finance Ministers Peer Steinbrück and Wolfgang Schäuble and other political leaders had thought and acted so clearly and quickly and stopped the cum-ex industry at an early stage. Instead, their work had to be done by the tax and investigative authorities and the judiciary. This has now led to Berger, one of the main suspects, finally coming to court.
Ironically, Switzerland, which is certainly not a model state in the fight against tax thieves, clearly identified the previous political grievances in this country in the Berger case. The German legislature was once “almost helpless” with Cum-Ex. The Berger case and its consequences, including a committee of inquiry in the Bundestag, would reveal the “untold difficulties at various levels” in Germany in the fight against this business.
It is hardly possible to bring all suspected crooks to justice
This is what it says in a Swiss judicial decision from the end of 2021, with which Berger’s objection to extradition had already been dismissed at the time. “Fraud to the detriment of the community can be assumed”. Now the extradition is finally decided. The forthcoming trials against Berger in Wiesbaden and Bonn should provide plenty of illustrative material for political failure.
Other business people who have apparently stolen hundreds of millions of euros with cum-ex deals are temporarily safe from German justice in Dubai and elsewhere. It will be difficult to bring all suspected crooks to justice. But Berger’s extradition shows that the wheels of justice are turning incessantly in this case.