She is the face of the state, which vehemently defends itself against a partly proven, partly alleged tax theft of immense proportions: Anne Brorhilker, senior public prosecutor from Cologne and to a certain extent the German Cum-Ex chief investigator. She has put banks in distress and accused people in jail, she has obtained initial judgments and she does not give up. But their opponents will not give up either.
Last Friday Brorhilker testified as a witness in a Cum-Ex investigation committee in Hamburg’s parliament, the citizenship. And before that, several lawyers involved in this tax scandal sent the U-Committee a catalog of more than 100 questions that Brorhilker was supposed to answer. Some questions read like an attack on the chief prosecutor.
One of the lawyers who wanted to tackle Brorhilker tough is Peter Gauweiler. The prominent CSU man and lawyer likes to fight hard, in politics as well as in the judiciary. In the cum-ex scandal, Gauweiler and his Munich law firm represent the Hamburg private banker Christian Olearius, who has appeared frequently in the media for several years. Because he is said to have exempted the tax authorities in share deals with his banking house Warburg (which Olearius and Warburg deny). Because he has written diaries in which Olaf Scholz, formerly Hamburg’s mayor and future Federal Chancellor, also appears when he talks about cum-ex.
It all has to do with Brorhilker’s investigation. And whether everything went right in the investigation, Gauweiler and some of his fellow lawyers would have liked to know. A copy of the questionnaire is circulating in legal circles. According to the transcript, the Cologne chief public prosecutor should answer all sorts of things in the Hamburg investigative committee. Did she know who could have betrayed the Olearius diaries she had confiscated to the media. How she got used to the cum-ex topic.
And further: Whether Brorhilker had contact with media like that Handelsblatt, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, mirrors, Time and others. And how long the shooting of the ARD documentary “The Billions Robbery – A Public Prosecutor Chasing the Tax Mafia” would have taken. Anyone reading the transcript of the questionnaire could get the idea of getting to the heart of the matter as follows: Does Brorhilker have any idea of what she is investigating? Or does it just matter to her to make it big in the media? In short: is she even suitable for this task and this job?
Anne Brorhilker, chief public prosecutor from Cologne and to a certain extent the German Cum-Ex chief investigator, has to answer many questions.
(Photo: Lukas Schulze)
Of course, lawyers would not approach a public prosecutor so directly and brutally; not even Gauweiler, who is considered a tough dog, as they say in Bavaria. But some things that Gauweiler & Co. wanted to know from the chief public prosecutor about the Hamburg U-Committee are unusual. Gauweiler did not want to comment on the questionnaire when asked by SZ. The U-Committee in Hamburg only asked some of the more than 100 questions during the public hearing of witnesses before it went non-public.
The committee is supposed to find out whether the future Chancellor Scholz, as Hamburg mayor, influenced tax investigations against the Warburg bank a good five years ago. At that time, Scholz had been visited several times by Warburg co-owner Olearius. Later, the Hamburg tax authorities refrained from an originally planned tax claim against Warburg amounting to almost 50 million euros. Scholz testified in the U committee that he had not interfered in the tax case.
For many years, banks and other financial companies had used a control loophole and had a tax paid only once be reimbursed several times by the cleverly deceived tax authorities when trading shares with (cum) and without (ex) dividends. The damage to the German state is said to amount to more than ten billion euros. As a prosecutor, Brorhilker obtained a not yet legally binding prison sentence against the former general representative of Warburg.
Warburg denies any malicious or even criminal intent
The bank itself could not avoid paying 155 million euros to the tax authorities. Warburg continues to deny any evil or even criminal intent. This also applies to co-owner Olearius, who of course has to face charges. And which has also been defended by Gauweiler for some time. And that in turn sticks to the line practiced in many proceedings, according to which attack is the best defense. At least that’s how the copy of the questionnaire to Brorhilker reads.
Many questions revolve around the ARD documentary, in which Brorhilker commented on the Cum-Ex investigation, but without mentioning names. At one point the public prosecutor describes a raid on an undisclosed bank (which was not Warburg). “We were sitting in a room with a glass facade and outside there were extremely indignant board members and employees and they were terribly upset. Because the mood shot up, there were scenes that someone held me by the arm or tried to hold me in a corner push. “
Elsewhere, Brorhilker tells how she and two colleagues visited a bank manager in 2019. He said: “My God, you are only women.” However, Gauweiler and his fellow lawyers were not concerned with such content in the ARD documentary in their extensive catalog of questions. Rather, Gauweiler & Co. wanted to know from Brorhilker how often they had met the authors of the documentary and with which superiors they had discussed participation in the documentary. The Public Prosecutor should also comment on possible contacts in politics. For example, whether she spoke to Fabio de Masi, who until recently was a member of the Bundestag for the Left.