Senior public prosecutor Tim Engel will be the new chief investigator in Cologne for the cum-ex tax fraud cases involving stock transactions and will therefore be the successor to Anne Brorhilker. The North Rhine-Westphalian Justice Minister Benjamin Limbach (Greens) announced this on Friday. Like Brorhilker, the 50-year-old is the head of the economic crime department at the Cologne public prosecutor’s office. He will now be trained by Brorhilker for a month until they leave. “I find it deeply regrettable that Ms. Brorhilker is leaving us,” said Limbach in the state parliament’s legal committee. But this is the freedom of every individual and therefore also that of a public prosecutor. This is undoubtedly a great loss for the judiciary and also regrettable for the Cum-Ex investigations.
The Cum-Ex fraud with illegal stock deals, which peaked from 2006 to 2011, is estimated to have defrauded the German state of a double-digit billion sum. Papers with (“cum”) and without (“ex”) dividend claims were moved back and forth between financial players in a short period of time. In the end, the tax authorities unknowingly refunded banks, stock traders and consultants capital gains taxes that had not been paid. Limbach rejected the opposition’s accusation that Brorhilker had not received sufficient support. With four additional department positions for public prosecutors, their wish for more staff was fully met. The positions were filled even faster than promised. Successor Engel had already dealt intensively with the Cum-Ex issue in the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Justice, where he was responsible for the area of white-collar criminal law between January 2020 and February 2023.
Brorhilker had criticized the political handling of the billion-dollar tax scandal. She is not satisfied with how financial crime is prosecuted in Germany. Tax theft has not stopped by a long shot; there are Cum-Ex successor models. The public prosecutor had spoken out in favor of a central, nationwide authority to combat financial crime. In the future, she herself wants to work as managing director of the non-governmental organization “Citizens’ Movement for Financial Transition” in the fight against financial crime. In around 120 cum-ex investigations, 1,700 suspects were investigated in Cologne under Brorhilker’s leadership. The public prosecutor’s office is leading the way nationwide in dealing with the scandal, which is considered the largest tax fraud in the history of the Federal Republic.