Almost two weeks after the chief investigator in the Cum-Ex scandal announced her resignation, a successor has been chosen. Senior public prosecutor Tim Engel will take over for Anne Brorhilker in Cologne.
The senior public prosecutor Tim Engel will be the new chief investigator in Cologne for the Cum-Ex tax fraud cases involving stock transactions. This was announced by the North Rhine-Westphalian Justice Minister Benjamin Limbach. The 50-year-old senior public prosecutor is the successor to Anne Brorhilker, who announced her resignation almost two weeks ago.
“I find it deeply regrettable that Ms. Brorhilker is leaving us,” said Limbach in the state parliament’s legal committee. It is a great loss for the judiciary and regrettable for the Cum-Ex investigations. But this is the freedom of every individual and therefore also that of a public prosecutor.
According to Limbach, like Brorhilker, Tim Engel is the head of the economic crime department at the Cologne public prosecutor’s office. He had already dealt intensively with the Cum-Ex issue at the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Justice, where he was responsible for white-collar criminal law between January 2020 and February 2023. He will now be trained by Brorhilker for a month until she leaves.
Successor is already familiar with the matter
As part of the Cum-Ex tax scandal, bankers, consultants and stock traders were reimbursed for taxes that no one had ever paid. These transactions are said to have cost taxpayers an estimated twelve billion euros.
Under Brorhilker’s leadership, around 120 cum-ex investigations are currently underway against more than 1,700 suspects. In 2019, her indictment also led to the first final verdict in the largest tax fraud in the history of the Federal Republic.
Brorhilker’s investigations also received public attention because they reached high politics. The findings surrounding the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg ultimately also put Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in need of an explanation, although there is no initial suspicion against him.
Criticism of the political cum-ex processing
The previous chief investigator unexpectedly announced her resignation at the end of April and 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.
In the Legal Affairs Committee, 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. 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.