Cum-Ex affair in Hamburg
“There was nothing”: Chancellor Scholz again rejects all allegations
On Friday, Olaf Scholz had to answer questions, namely in the Hamburg Parliament. It was again about his role in the so-called Cum-Ex affair – at that time Scholz was the first mayor of the Hanseatic city. The investigative committee asks itself the following questions: Did politicians ensure in 2016 and 2017 that a 47 million tax debt from the Warburg Bank was not collected? Who influenced the decision-makers of the tax authorities and how? Were officials ordered to go easy on the bank? The opposition in the Hanseatic city led by the SPD and the Greens sees opportunities to prove Scholz’s misconduct. The chancellor has so far pointed out that the committee of inquiry has found no evidence of political influence in 2.5 years of work. He cannot remember the conversations with the head of the Warburg Bank. Richard Seelmaecker from the CDU said before the committee meeting began: “That’s out of the question. He has an excellent memory. He’s a file eater, he can still tell you today how the suspension in the Elbphilharmonie looks and works. He remembers all of these things. And he doesn’t want to recall three meetings where the existential importance of the bank was at stake.In addition, there was an inconsistency in statements regarding the meeting with colleagues in the Bundestag in July 2020, if I understand correctly what has now been published in the press is. Then I say to myself, there are contradictions in it.” The Cum-Ex affair is about a fraud scheme in which those involved had the state reimburse them for unpaid capital gains taxes. The head of the NGO Finanzwende, Gerhard Schick, estimates the damage to taxpayers at more than ten billion euros. In addition to Scholz, his successor as First Mayor Peter Tschentscher is also being targeted by the investigators, because he was Finance Senator in Hamburg at the time.
Before the committee of inquiry into the Cum-Ex scandal in Hamburg, Olaf Scholz again rejected any influence. “There was nothing there,” insists the Chancellor.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) answered questions from the committee of inquiry into the Warburg Bank scandal in Hamburg – and once again rejected all allegations.
“I had no influence on the Warburg tax procedure,” said Scholz on Friday at the beginning of his witness questioning. The Chancellor spoke of “conjectures and insinuations” directed against him. The opposition in Hamburg and in the federal government meanwhile expressed massive doubts about Scholz’s credibility.
Olaf Scholz: “No influence by politics”
Scholz expressly contradicted the central suspicion that the investigative committee in Hamburg has been trying to clear up for two and a half years – namely that the Warburg Bank should be protected by political intervention from having to pay a million-dollar fine because of the Cum-Ex scandal. scholz was the first mayor of the Hanseatic city at the time in question.
“The tax process was not influenced by politics,” Scholz clarified. “There was no such influence,” he said – and added: “There was nothing.” Scholz thus stuck to his earlier statements on the matter without any reservations; for him it was already the second testimony before the Hamburg committee.
The allegations are based on assumptions and these are “wrong and are clearly not supported by anything or anyone,” said Scholz. Scholz emphasized that he had no detailed knowledge of the tax procedure in question in the financial administration when he was mayor and finance minister.
Opposition in Hamburg is dissatisfied
Three of Scholz’s meetings with Warburg Bank representatives in 2016 and 2017 were also discussed in the witness questioning. These meetings fueled the suspicion that the then mayor and the bankers might have colluded to protect the bank.
Scholz vehemently contradicted this suspicion on Friday. “There is not even the slightest hint anywhere” that something had been agreed, he said. That couldn’t be the case either, he always behaved “correctly”. “Neither before nor after the meeting did he influence the decisions of the Hamburg tax authorities,” he said.
Scholz emphasized that the city of Hamburg suffered “no financial damage in this matter”. Warburg later paid the amounts reclaimed.
The opposition in the Hamburg committee was dissatisfied with Scholz’s statements at the meeting. Left representative Norbert Hackbusch criticized Scholz’s initial statement as “somewhat presumptuous”. Hackbusch told the Chancellor that Scholz was making a final assessment of the committee’s work, which he was not entitled to do.
Scholz mostly calmly answered the questions of the deputies in the meeting room of the Hamburg Parliament. Occasionally, however, he showed displeasure: Scholz accused a CDU MP of making a “subtle remark”, and elsewhere he said: “It makes no sense that we are speculating here together.”
Criticism for Chancellor – but also backing
Even before the statement, the opposition in the federal government expressed doubts about the chancellor’s credibility in the matter. “Unfortunately, I have to say it so clearly: I don’t believe a word the Chancellor says,” said CDU leader Friedrich Merz to the “Handelsblatt”. “In Germany there is hardly anyone who takes away the many memory gaps from Olaf Scholz.”
Left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch asked Scholz for clarification. “We need clarity instead of questionable gaps in memory,” he told the Funke newspapers.
Scholz received support from Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP). “The Chancellor has our full confidence,” Lindner told the “Rheinische Post”. “I have always perceived Olaf Scholz – whether in the opposition or now in the government – as a person of integrity and there is no reason to doubt it.”