exclusive
Their investigations led to the first verdicts in the Cum-Ex tax scandal and left Chancellor Scholz in need of an explanation: Anne Brorhilker is leaving WDR-Information the judiciary to fight against financial crime elsewhere.
Germany’s most important cum-ex investigator is leaving, according to information from WDR-Investigative the judiciary. Anne Brorhilker then submitted a “request for dismissal from civil service” to the public prosecutor’s office on Monday morning. The 50-year-old senior public prosecutor heads the main department set up specifically for Germany’s largest tax scandal, which is currently investigating more than 1,700 suspects. The cum-ex transactions are said to have cost taxpayers an estimated twelve billion euros. Bankers, consultants and stock traders were reimbursed for taxes that no one had ever paid – a dig into the state treasury.
Brorhilker has been investigating cum-ex cases since 2012. With her team, she managed to get key witnesses who revealed the hidden deals for the first time. Her indictment led to the first final verdict in 2019. Investigators later brought “Mr. Cum-Ex” Hanno Berger, who once fled to Switzerland, to court in Germany. The tax lawyer was finally sentenced to eight years in prison before the Bonn regional court.
Brorhilker’s investigations also received public attention because they reached high politics. The findings surrounding the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg ultimately also put Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in need of an explanation, although there is no initial suspicion against him.
“Weak judiciary”
In an interview with WDRBrorhilker said investigatively about her decision: “I have always been a prosecutor with heart and soul, especially in the area of economic crime, but I am not at all satisfied with the way financial crime is prosecuted in Germany. It often involves perpetrators with a lot of money and good contacts , and they encounter a weak judiciary.” In addition, defendants could often simply buy their way out of proceedings if, for example, proceedings were dropped in return for a fine. “Then we have the conclusion: You hang the little ones, you let the big ones go.” As an individual prosecutor, there is little you can do to change this.
According to Brorhilker’s conclusion, politicians have still not reacted adequately eleven years after the first cum-ex cases became known. Tax theft has not stopped by a long shot; there are successor models, like a “hare and hedgehog game”. The reason is a lack of controls over what is happening at banks and on the stock markets. “If there is no control by state organs, then people grab the displays. But if there is a video camera installed over the display, then you think three times about whether to access them.”
In order to solve the problem, the prosecutor is in favor of more personnel in law enforcement and a nationwide central authority to combat financial crime that also prosecutes tax offenses.
Setback for processing
Brorhilker announced that in the future, as managing director of the non-governmental organization Finanzwende, she would advocate for such ideas in the fight against financial crime. Her decision to leave the public prosecutor’s office could be compared “as if a doctor decided to no longer treat individual patients but to go into research in order to develop a therapy, to get to the root of the problem, so to speak.”
Financial turnaround confirmed the personnel. Finanzwende board member Gerhard Schick explained: “I am pleased that Anne Brorhilker wants to realign her fight to solve financial crimes – nationwide and on the part of civil society.”
Brorhilker’s departure is likely to be a setback for the investigation. The Cum-Ex scandal is far from being solved. Many affected banks are still making billions in profits from cum-ex transactions. The role of well-known financial institutions involved, such as Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch or Santander, has not yet been investigated criminally, nor has that of state banks such as the former WestLB and HSH Nordbank.
Resistance in the judiciary
Brorhilker does not see the danger that the investigation could come to a standstill if she leaves. “We now have a large team, there are over 30 prosecutors who are working with commitment on these issues. Four departments have been founded with four department heads. That’s why we are well positioned, and I think my colleagues are doing an excellent job. If you… If you continue to support them, things will continue to go well.”
Despite the warm farewell words: In the past, Brorhilker has repeatedly encountered resistance in the North Rhine-Westphalia judiciary. Around 2020, when she investigated suspicions in the proceedings against the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg as to whether Hamburg tax officials and SPD politicians helped the bank keep cum-ex loot in 2016. Brorhilker wanted to search, a corresponding decision had already been made by the district judge. But Brorhilker’s superiors in the public prosecutor’s office stopped the process.
According to the reasoning, the investigator should have presented the application to them first. A year-long dispute followed until the raid finally took place. In the interview, Brorhilker did not want to comment on the process or whether she felt adequately supported in her own house.
Power struggle with the Minister of Justice
There had also been conflicts with the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Justice. There was, among other things, a power struggle last fall WDR-Investigatively reported. Justice Minister Benjamin Limbach (Greens) planned to split up Brorhilker’s department and give it another main department head. According to the minister, a single manager cannot take into account the enormous volume of tasks. In addition, the management of the Cum-Ex investigation must be secured by another person.
Only after a public outcry did Limbach back away from the plans.
In the interview, Brorhilker comments on the dispute for the first time: “I was very surprised by the plans to split up my main department. At the time, I didn’t see it as the support it was intended to be.” In the meantime, however, there have been good discussions. The ministry has created four more positions. The dispute was not the reason for her leaving the judiciary.
“Enormous amounts of damage”
There was repeated criticism of the Cologne public prosecutor’s actions, not only internally but also externally. For example, that Brorhilker initiated investigations far too quickly, investigated far too broadly and got lost in the process. “It’s not a strategic decision to consider whether or not to prosecute a crime as a prosecutor, you have to do it. If you didn’t do it, it would be thwarting punishment in office,” said Brorhilker. However, she didn’t see that she would come across such a large network.
Brorhilker also does not want to accept the objection that the Cum-Ex funds could be brought back into the state treasury much more quickly if the criminal proceedings against fines were stopped: “I can’t imagine how you can implement that given the general conditions, that we find in the Cum-Ex investigations. There are enormous amounts of damage in the two to three-digit millions, sometimes in the billions. In addition, with such deals you never get the full amount of the damage back. “If it gets high, the accused will offer half, but under no circumstances the full amount. And that’s absurd, why should we allow ourselves to be left out like a Christmas goose?”
It remains to be seen whether the Cologne public prosecutor’s office will see it the same way in the future. Anne Brorhilker will be watching from the sidelines in the future.
A long version of the Exclusive interviews with public prosecutor Brorhilker can be found in the ARD media library. You can also find it in the ARD media library ARD story “Billion-dollar robbery – A public prosecutor hunts the tax mafia”.