Status: 03.02.2022 3:23 p.m
The Cologne public prosecutor is searching the offices of the auditor PwC in Frankfurt. The company’s customers are said to have been involved in the cum-ex scandal.
The Cologne public prosecutor’s office is searching the offices of the Frankfurt-based auditing company PwC. A PwC spokesman confirmed the search tagesschau.de and said you were a witness at the trial. You cooperate with the authorities. The “Handelsblatt” had previously reported.
The responsible chief public prosecutor Ulrich Bremer from Cologne said on request tagesschau.de: “The public prosecutor’s office in Cologne has been executing a search warrant in Frankfurt/Main since yesterday morning, which is directed against an auditing company based there.” In addition to the Cologne public prosecutor, investigators from Hesse and the tax investigation from Hesse are also involved.
Big bank SEB under suspicion
According to the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, the searches are about the cum-ex transactions of a bank for which the auditor acted in an advisory capacity: “The search serves to find relevant communication in the form of e-mails and other written correspondence.” The bank is said to be the major Swedish bank SEB, for which PwC has certified the balance sheets and waved them through as flawless.
SEB is said to have been part of the cum-ex deals. In December, investigators searched the bank’s German headquarters in Frankfurt. The German state demands 936 million euros back from the institute. According to a statement in December, the bank itself considers this claim to be unfounded and intends to contest it. According to SEB, it is about the business of the subsidiary DSK Hyp. The bank did not offer or carry out any transactions in Germany “to the best of its knowledge” that were aimed at getting unpaid taxes, it was said at the time.
Biggest tax scandal in post-war history
In cum-ex deals, stocks with (‘cum’) and no (‘ex’) dividend entitlements were shuffled around the payout date – a confusing gamble to fool authorities. In the end, taxes that had not been paid at all were reimbursed by the tax authorities. Several public prosecutors have been investigating for years.
The Cologne public prosecutor’s office has central responsibility because the Bonn Federal Central Tax Office is in their area. Last July, the Federal Court of Justice determined in a groundbreaking judgment that cum-ex transactions are to be assessed as tax evasion and are therefore punishable. Cum-Ex is considered the biggest tax scandal in post-war German history.