The proceedings for serious tax evasion against the former head of the Hamburg Warburg Bank, Christian Olearius, have been discontinued. The Bonn Regional Court made this decision on Monday afternoon, considering the 82-year-old’s poor health to be a permanent inability to stand trial and an obstacle to the trial. Before this, it was already foreseeable that the proceedings would be discontinued. Both the public prosecutor and the defense had requested this.
In the trial, which has now ended with a dismissal ruling, the public prosecutor’s office accused the banker from Hamburg of serious tax evasion in 14 cases, two of which were only attempted. Between 2006 and 2019, he and his accomplices are said to have deprived the tax authorities of 280 million euros in tax revenue. If convicted, Olearius would have faced a prison sentence of up to ten years.
A discontinuance of the proceedings leaves the question of guilt unanswered. Olearius has always denied all allegations, and he also made such statements in court on Monday. It is currently unclear what will happen with a possible fine of around 40 million euros. This is the amount Olearius is said to have profited from the deals. The public prosecutor could initiate confiscation proceedings independent of the criminal proceedings in order to obtain the money. They had previously applied for the trial to be transferred to such proceedings and thus to be decoupled from the criminal proceedings. However, the court rejected this last week and pointed out that the prosecutors had not yet completed their investigations into this matter.
Exclusive
:Germany goes after Cum-Ex suspect abroad
Paul Mora is considered one of the masterminds behind Germany’s biggest tax scandal and was at one point on Interpol’s “Most Wanted” list. Now the judiciary is putting on a lot of pressure to bring him before a German court. It would not be the investigators’ first success.
Olearius is the most prominent German banker who has been accused of the so-called Cum-Ex deals were brought to court. These were the deals in which clever bankers, several financial institutions, lawyers and consultants traded shares on the dividend date and ended up getting a refund of taxes that they had not previously paid. Tax investigators estimate that the tax authorities may have suffered a total loss of more than ten billion euros. Cum-Ex is considered the largest German tax scandal.
Around 15 years ago, the tax authorities and public prosecutors discovered the deals, and since 2019 the Cum-Ex deals have been heard in court. Since then, Warburg Bank has paid more than 240 million euros to the tax office. Two former Warburg managers received long prison sentences. The Federal Court of Justice has deemed such transactions to the detriment of the tax authorities to be a criminal offense. The Bonn Regional Court has already handed down eight convictions for Cum-Ex since 2020, and a large number of proceedings are likely to follow in the coming years.
Christian Gottfried Olearius, as he is known in full, was once one of the most important bankers in Germany. He was considered a helper in difficult situations, a welcome conversation partner in politics and the ideal image of a Hanseatic merchant. The fact that the trial in Bonn attracted so much publicity was not only due to the private banker and Elbphilharmonie patron himself, but also to his contacts with the current Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).
During Scholz’s time as First Mayor of Hamburg, Olearius had met with the politician several times, including in 2016 and 2017, precisely at the time when the tax authorities in Hamburg waived a claim for repayment of 47 million from the Warburg Bank. Olearius noted these meetings in his diaries and thus put the current Chancellor in political trouble.
Union calls for Cum-Ex investigation committee in the Bundestag
It is not yet known what these meetings were about in detail. Olearius has not yet commented publicly on the matter, Scholz denies any possible influence on the tax proceedings and, according to his own statements, cannot remember any details of the meetings.
In the Hanseatic city, a committee of inquiry is currently underway into the issue, in which both Chancellor Scholz and his Chancellor’s Office Minister Wolfgang Schmidt have already testified. The Union is calling for a committee of inquiry in the Bundestag, but the traffic light government is resisting this. The case is currently before the Federal Constitutional Court.