Gerhard Schick, who sat in the Bundestag for the Greens and now heads the Finanzwende organization, is one of the most persistent Cum-Ex investigators. Cum-Ex represents one of the largest German tax scandals, with billions of euros in damages for the state treasury. In the middle of the last decade, Schick ensured that an investigative committee in the Bundestag tried to clarify how banks and stock exchange traders were able to exclude the state for years.
Now Schick sees further clarification being jeopardized by, of all people, a party colleague; by the North Rhine-Westphalia Minister of Justice Benjamin Limbach. The Minister of Justice supports plans to split up the Cum-Ex main department at the Cologne public prosecutor’s office. Under the direction of Senior Public Prosecutor Anne Brorhilker, the current main department is investigating 120 investigations against 1,700 suspects who are said to have taken part in the tax theft.
Over the years, Brorhilker has earned a reputation as a tenacious cum-ex investigator. Now she is supposed to hand over the majority of the cases to a new, second main department. This should be led by a colleague who comes from the juvenile justice system. The Justice Minister’s actions are “wrong and counterproductive,” says former Bundestag member Schick. Chief Public Prosecutor Brorhilker will be disempowered; This is a “severe blow” for the investigation of the tax scandal.
The cum-ex bankers could “pop the champagne corks”
The idea of being able to better manage the immense number of cum-ex procedures with two main departments is “completely unsuitable”. And if, as planned, the second head of the department comes from juvenile criminal law and has no experience with white-collar criminal proceedings and certainly not with cum-ex, then “nothing will be gained”. Then there could only be conflicts with Brorhilker.
Limbach, who was formerly a judge in Cologne and then worked for a long time in the Ministry of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia before becoming a minister himself, sees it differently. The son of Jutta Limbach, the former president of the Federal Constitutional Court, defended himself against criticism in the legal committee of the Düsseldorf state parliament on Wednesday: He recognized Brorhilker’s “outstanding achievements,” he said, but it was necessary to create a new main department for “a more efficient one and faster task completion. The previous main department grew rapidly because of the investigations and now has more prosecutors than entire public prosecutor’s offices in medium-sized cities such as Paderborn or Siegen. The case is also very complex. Therefore, a single head of department “cannot adequately take the volume of tasks into account, even with the greatest effort.”
The Ministry of Justice apparently sees the existing structure with only one senior public prosecutor at the top, namely Brorhilker, as a “bottleneck”. If two managers, each with their own main department, took care of the many cum-ex cases, more charges and more cases could be expected, according to those close to the ministry. Nobody wants to wait another 20 years for the last cum-ex criminal trial.
Limbach’s Green party colleague Schick fears the opposite. This “mistaken action” could amount to “stopping numerous proceedings in order to move forward more quickly”. Many profiteers who have caused great damage to society “would get away with it again,” Schick suspects. More than once, “poor political decisions have caused the champagne corks to pop among cum-ex bankers.” Today is probably another day like that. “This is bitter for all honest taxpayers.” The organization founded and led by Schick Financial turnaround is committed to combating tax evasion, money laundering and other financial crimes more consistently with stricter laws and better equipped investigative authorities.
When trading stocks with (cum) and without (ex) dividends, numerous banks and stock exchange traders tricked the tax authorities and had the tax authorities reimburse the tax on the dividend income several times, which they had only paid once. The Federal Court of Justice has now ruled that this grab into the state treasury was criminal. Tax investigators assume there is a high number of unreported cases beyond the officially known cases and estimate the total damage at more than ten billion euros.
The public prosecutor’s office should skim off illegal profits more quickly
Brorhilkers like Limbach are under pressure to move the investigation forward more quickly than before and to bring as much money back into the state treasury as possible. At an earlier meeting in the Legal Affairs Committee of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament, the SPD opposition calculated that 1.5 billion euros were at stake in North Rhine-Westphalia alone. This money could be used to better equip kindergartens, schools and the judiciary. But it is probably the case that the Cologne public prosecutor’s office is drowning in so much work. Limbach and the Ministry of Justice apparently also fear this.
It is also heard from circles in the black-green state government that they are pushing for a quicker recovery of illegal profits from cum-ex deals. Brorhilker is said not to be interested in quick money, but in a lot of money. Lawyers involved in the cases say that the Cum-Ex investigator wants to clarify as much as possible which banks and stock exchange traders were responsible for which. In order to then skim off large amounts. According to legal circles, many banks would prefer to make quick deals in order to get off lightly.
On Wednesday, Minister Limbach also spoke out in the Legal Affairs Committee against quick deals that would allow those responsible to get off lightly: “A bulging wallet must not protect against punishment. The masterminds and those responsible must be held accountable.”
Schick, on the other hand, fears that the actual problem is not being addressed at all. There are far too few police employees who “help with the analysis of the immense amount of data and in other ways” and therefore work hard to help the Cologne public prosecutor’s office: “This bottleneck continues to exist.”