One of the main defendants in the Cum-Ex tax evasion trials, former lawyer Hanno Berger, has failed in his constitutional complaint against his sentence to eight years in prison. In its decision published on Tuesday, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe decided that his submission was not sufficiently justified and therefore inadmissible.
Berger had, among other things, alleged a violation of a fair trial. In the meantime, in a second trial before the Wiesbaden regional court, he was also sentenced to eight years and three months in prison for tax evasion. However, this second judgment is not yet legally binding and was not the subject of the Federal Constitutional Court’s current decision.
Berger is considered one of the intellectual fathers of the Cum-Ex fraud system. Investors had the capital gains tax paid on stock dividends reimbursed several times by the tax office. Between 2007 and 2011 alone, the tax authorities wrongly paid back a total of 275 million euros in capital gains tax.
Berger, who was previously a high-ranking tax official himself and then became a tax lawyer, acted as a strategy consultant and received commission of 13.6 million euros between 2007 and 2011. The Bonn regional court therefore sentenced him to eight years’ imprisonment in December 2022 and confiscated the amount of 13.6 million euros.
The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) rejected Berger’s appeal in October last year, making his first conviction final. The constitutional complaint lodged by the now 73-year-old was also unsuccessful. Berger initially avoided the process by traveling to Switzerland. He was not extradited to Germany until spring 2022 so that the trial against him could begin at the Bonn regional court.