Status: 13.12.2022 07:50 a.m
The trial against one of the key figures in the cum-ex scandal ends before the Bonn Regional Court. Hanno Berger made tax evasion of unimaginable amounts possible for his clients.
Hanno Berger, now 72 years old, expects to spend the rest of his life in prison – and the demand to have to pay back many millions. 15 years imprisonment are quite possible. This is what the legislature provides for intentional tax evasion. And at the latest from one million euros in evaded taxes, probation is almost impossible.
So Berger shouldn’t be under any illusions when he enters Room 11 of the Bonn Regional Court for the last time this afternoon. Prosecutors are asking for nine years in prison. In the last session, his defense attorneys appealed to the “goodness of the court” towards the man who once began his dazzling career as a talented tax investigator but later changed sides.
The Cum Ex system
Although Berger did not invent the complex cum-ex business, he made it accessible to his customers – very rich private individuals. In these transactions, which were previously mainly carried out by investment banks, shares change hands several times around the date of the dividend payment. Capital gains tax is payable once on the dividend. But anyone who owned the shares, even for a short time, had those taxes refunded. The damage from such transactions is several billion. Money that the public coffers lacked elsewhere – the accused himself is said to have said that the money could not then be spent on kindergartens. Anyone who has a problem with that cannot work for him.
Since 2007 at the latest, these transactions have been known to be problematic. In 2009, the Federal Ministry of Finance tightened the rule and finally made Cum-Ex impossible by law in 2012. In Bonn, Berger is accused of several cases of tax evasion with damage to the state treasury of 278 million euros – transactions from the years 2007 to 2011.
Angry citizen Berger
The fact that Berger is on trial in Germany is not a matter of course. In November 2012, the Cologne public prosecutor’s office searched several banks and the offices of the tax attorney in Frankfurt am Main in a major raid. Berger went to Switzerland – the country only rarely delivers.
And so Berger initially felt quite safe in his exile, received journalists there and cursed the “dirty pigs” and “saubande” in “left-wing fascist” Germany in angry citizen manner. When his former law firm partner testified as a key witness in 2016 and several banks disclosed their illegal transactions, the tide turned. Berger was arrested in Switzerland in 2021, he has been back in Germany since February 2022 and is in custody.
Partial confession and no apology
Berger began the process from April of this year before the district court in Bonn in handcuffs and with a bludgeon. He fell out with his lawyers, he doesn’t really see himself as guilty. His view: exploiting loopholes in the law cannot be punishable. Then, in August, a tentative U-turn: Berger testified what his lawyers call a confession. However, he only conceded that as of 2009 he should have known better that this type of deal was “problematic”.
Several courts have already rejected this argument in their judgments against other defendants, and public prosecutor Jan Schletz also sees this “partial admission” as purely tactically motivated – in other words: Berger is only trying to make good weather. Judge Roland Zickler had already made it clear during the trial what he expected from Berger. The former tax attorney, who got rich with cum-ex deals, had to apologize and “heal” the damage to the tax authorities, i.e. pay money. There was a sum of 13.6 million euros in the room – money that Berger claims to no longer have.
In any case, the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne does not believe that. Shortly before the verdict, there was a raid on several people close to Berger. The suspicion: serious money laundering. This, too, is likely to have an impact on the court’s decision-making process.