Status: 08/08/2022 3:12 p.m
Former tax attorney Berger is considered by investigators to be the “Spiritus Rector” of the illegal cum-ex business. He is on trial for tax evasion. Now he admitted to having acted with intent from a certain point in time.
One of the best-known figures in the Cum-Ex tax scandal, Hanno Berger, admitted to the Bonn Regional Court that he acted with conditional intent.
Berger is charged with three cases of particularly serious tax evasion between 2007 and 2013. In his partial confession, he now admitted that he had acted with conditional intent from 2009. That year, the Ministry of Finance had made it clear in a letter that it had serious concerns about Berger’s method of tax planning. Berger knew this letter, but is said to have stuck to the method. His defense attorney stressed that before 2009, however, he saw no intent.
The former lawyer and chief bank auditor in Hesse Berger is often referred to as “Mr. Cum-Ex” and has to answer for several lawsuits. He is said to have convinced the Hamburg Warburg Bank to get into the cum-ex business and also to have set up the necessary structures. He is also said to have recruited investors. The state suffered financial damage of 278 million euros from the crimes accused in this process, from which Berger is said to have benefited.
method basically illegal
In cum-ex deals, investors pushed shares back and forth between several participants around the dividend payment date. Some of these shares were entitled to a distribution (“cum”), while others were not (“ex”). As a result, the tax authorities reimbursed investors for capital gains taxes on these transactions, which in fact were never paid. This cheated the state out of billions. For several years, investigators and courts have been trying to work through the biggest tax scandal in post-war history.
The perpetrators used a tax scheme that was changed in 2012 for their purposes. In addition, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled in 2020 that the cum-ex deals were illegal. In the specific case, two stock traders had argued that they had only exploited a tax loophole. However, the BGH ruled that Cum-Ex is to be considered tax evasion.