As of: 09/16/2022 5:01 p.m
Was a hitherto unknown meeting between Chancellor Scholz and the SPD politician Kahrs, who was accused of the Cum-Ex scandal, kept secret? A calendar entry raises questions.
Early in the morning, investigators gained access to the apartments of former SPD politician Johannes Kahrs during the cum-ex raid last fall. The former budget spokesman for the SPD and former chairman of the conservative “Seeheimer Kreis” is suspected of having helped the traditional Hamburg bank MM Warburg, together with others, so that they were allowed to keep 47 million euros in tax money from illegal cum-ex transactions. The investigations by the Cologne public prosecutor’s office are still ongoing – and keep bringing new details to light.
This is how the investigators secured after research by the WDR in the raid on Kahrs’ computer, among other things, a calendar entry that could indicate an explosive meeting. A meeting with Olaf Scholz is noted there for August 30, 2020. Did this meeting take place? Scholz has not mentioned it anywhere so far. Neither in answers to small inquiries nor before the investigative committee that is supposed to clarify the Warburg affair.
The meeting on August 30, 2020 could be explosive: Scholz was Vice Chancellor, Finance Minister and SPD candidate for Chancellor at the time. At this point, Kahrs had already resigned from all political offices. If the meeting actually took place, the timing would be remarkable. Because just a day later, Scholz and Kahrs received an official request NDR, “Zeit” and “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on Cum-Ex and the Warburg affair on the table. On September 3, 2020, the media then published an explosive story based on excerpts from the diaries of Warburg owner Christian Olearius. The banker’s personal notes put two men in particular at the center of the scandal: Olaf Scholz and Johannes Kahrs.
No investigations against Scholz
The reports revealed that Scholz had not only received Olearius personally in his office once in the 2016/2017 period in question, as was previously known, but three times. In addition, a call from Scholz to Olearius became public, in which the then mayor is said to have advised the private banker to forward a letter of defense to the then Finance Senator Peter Tschentscher without comment. A short time later, the tax authorities actually waived the corresponding requirement. According to the diaries, Kahrs is said to have jumped to the side of the Warburg Bank in the tax dispute. A little later, Olearius Kahrs’ constituency in Hamburg made a party donation.
Scholz and Tschentscher vehemently deny that there was any political influence in Hamburg on the Warburg-Bank tax procedure in the matter of cum-ex. Neither is being investigated.
When did Scholz last see Kahrs?
The questions about the role of Scholz and Kahrs in the cum-ex scandal got a boost a few weeks ago when it became known that the Cologne investigators had discovered more than 214,000 euros in cash during the raid in Kahrs’ safe deposit box. There is no indication that this money is related to Cum-Ex. The investigators left the bills in the safe – interest in the scandal was nevertheless aroused nationwide.
Did Scholz and Kahrs meet on August 30, 2020, shortly before the press inquiry and the explosive publication? And if so, did they talk about Cum-EX? Even if Scholz and Kahrs did not officially have the official press inquiry on August 30th, rumors often circulate for days before such confrontations. Finding answers to these questions seems unusually difficult.
At his summer press conference in August, when asked when he last saw Kahrs, the chancellor replied: “It must have been a long time ago.” A week later, this time as a witness in the Hamburg Cum-Ex investigative committee, Scholz said to the same question: “I think that was a long time ago. But I think that I have one, or I even know for sure that I was on the same ship with him during the Seeheimer asparagus trip. Where I had left the ship before it started and I remember saying ‘Hello’.”
“Self-selected the dates”
The committee of inquiry then also addressed the question of whether Scholz’s office manager may have only partially forwarded information from the appointment calendar to the committee of inquiry. In an e-mail, the employee wrote that “to discuss with Olaf how we sort the appointments, meetings, telephone calls with Kahrs, Pawelczyk and Tschentscher”. Scholz explained that his employee had not agreed with him and selected the dates independently.
According to Scholz, he tried to report the meetings that took place from the calendar. His staff reviewed it and reported it to the committee so MPs had “a complete picture”. His office was also looking for information on the topics of discussion of the appointments with Kahrs. The Warburg Bank or the topic of cum-ex were not noted as a topic of conversation for any of these dates in the calendar.
In view of the newly appeared calendar entry at Kahrs, he asked WDR specifically after a meeting on August 30, 2020 with Kahrs. The Chancellery does not feel responsible for the questions. A government spokesman said in writing: “The appointment calendar kept in the Chancellery for the Federal Chancellor begins on December 8, 2021. It is therefore not possible to make any statements about a calendar entry before that.”
At Scholz’ former place of work, the Ministry of Finance, it is said that there is no obligation to record all conversations that have been held. There was no comprehensive documentation. In response to a small inquiry from the left-wing faction last summer, the ministry said at the time that a specialist from the ministry had met Kahrs in September 2019 to talk about the federal debt system. In addition, State Secretary Kukies had breakfast with Kahrs and Warburg owner Olearius in spring 2019 to talk about the Bafin. “The query did not result in any appointments or meetings in the sense of the question.” Kahrs himself didn’t answer at all WDR-Inquiry. Were there really no meetings between Kahrs and Scholz in which Cum-Ex was also discussed? The question seems simpler than a clear answer.