Scholz told to Quit over Multibillion-Euro Tax Fraud Scandal
Newslooks- BERLIN (AP) – The Telegraph
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared Friday before a parliamentary panel in the northern state of Hamburg to answer lawmakers’ questions about his handling of a tax evasion scam when he was mayor of the city.
Political opponents have called on Scholz to provide more information about meetings he had in 2016 and 2017 with private bank M.M. Warburg that faced demands to repay millions of euros in tax refunds it had wrongly claimed for share trades.
Scholz, who became federal finance minister in 2018, has previously stated that he doesn’t remember details of the meetings, but denies that he intervened to get Hamburg officials to drop their demand for Warburg to repay 47 million euros.
Opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the center-right Christian Democrats said he didn’t believe Scholz’s memory lapses.
“When you’re talking about a tax demand in the three-figure millions concerning such a big bank in your own city, then you don’t forget what was said during the conversation,” Merz told German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview published Friday.
Dozens of bankers are being investigated in connection with so-called cum-ex share transactions that are said to have cost the German state billions of euros.
Olaf Scholz was facing calls to resign on Friday as he prepared to testify to a committee again over his role in tackling a multibillion-euro tax fraud scheme as Hamburg’s mayor.
Richard Seelmaecker, the opposition CDU party’s representative on the commission, said Germany’s chancellor and his successor as mayor, Peter Tschentscher, should step down.
“Both have to resign,” he told Germany’s DPA news agency.
The CumEx scheme, first revealed in 2017, involved numerous banks and investors exploiting a loophole by swiftly exchanging company shares amongst themselves around dividend day in order to claim multiple tax rebates on a single payout.
The committee is investigating why local financial authorities in 2016 dropped a bid to claw back €47 million (£39 million) in taxes from Hamburg bank Warburg over CumEx trades.
‘There has been no political influence’
“It all stinks to high heaven and simply cannot have happened without political influence,” Mr Seelmaecker told broadcaster n-tv.
Mr Scholz, who has already appeared before the committee once, has repeatedly dismissed any suggestions he acted inappropriately.
“Countless files have been studied, countless people have been heard. The result is always: There has been no political influence,” Mr Scholz recently told reporters.
Steffen Hebestreit, the chancellor’s spokesman, said earlier this week that Mr Scholz, who was the mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018, had nothing to hide.
But a tranche of emails seized recently from Mr Scholz’s former office manager could bring new evidence to light, according to several German media reports.
There are rumours that Warburg bank was let off after a conversation between Mr Scholz and the bank’s co-owner Christian Olearius Credit: Sean Gallup /Getty Images Europe
Rumours are spreading that the decision to let Warburg off in 2016 followed a conversation between Mr Scholz and Christian Olearius, the bank’s co-owner.
Mr Scholz, who says he cannot remember the details of the conversations he had with Mr Olearius, has been accused of withholding information from investigators.
Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader, said on Friday it was “simply completely unbelievable” that Mr Scholz could not remember details of the event.
“Unfortunately, I have to say it so clearly: I don’t believe a word the chancellor says,” he told Handelsblatt.
With Mr Scholz’s popularity already waning amid widespread criticism of his response to the war in Ukraine, the case threatens to further undermine the chancellor as he fights to hold together a fractious coalition and deal with a mounting energy crisis.
