Chancellor Scholz should face the Federal Committee of Inquiry

Berlin CDU and CSU want to set up a committee of inquiry in the Bundestag and clarify what role Chancellor Olaf Scholz played as first mayor in Hamburg in the Cum Ex scandal of private bank Warburg. His actions “raise considerable questions,” write CDU faction leader Friedrich Merz and CSU group leader Alexander Dobrindt in a letter to the members of the Union faction. It is available to the Handelsblatt.

With the parliamentary committee of inquiry, the Union faction wants to clarify the “Scholz-Warburg tax affair”, as Merz and Dobrindt call it.

They justify the move by pointing out that the parliamentary group has “repeatedly made attempts to clarify the situation in recent months, for example as part of a government survey of the Federal Chancellor in the plenary session of the German Bundestag or with the instrument of (written) parliamentary questions. Many questions remained unanswered.” The attempt to question the Federal Chancellor in the Finance Committee of the Bundestag was also “repeatedly prevented by the government factions”.

In cum-ex transactions, blocks of shares were shifted back and forth by several participants around the dividend record date with (“cum”) and without (“ex”) a right to a dividend. As a result, tax offices reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid at all. The state suffered billions in damage.

In the scandal surrounding the private bank Warburg, after a meeting between the then mayor Scholz and the Warburg shareholders Christian Olearius and Max Warburg in 2016, the Hamburg tax authorities allowed a tax reclaim of 47 million euros against the bank to become statute-barred. A year later, under pressure from the Federal Ministry of Finance, she asked for a refund of 43 million euros, shortly before this too would have become statute-barred.

The Hamburg Parliament had already set up a committee of inquiry. He could not prove any wrongdoing by Scholz. But now the Union wants to clarify the role of Olaf Scholz as Federal Minister of Finance and later Chancellor at federal level and to examine extensive documents such as files and mail traffic and question witnesses. “The cum-ex transactions of the Warburg Bank are no small matter,” said parliamentary group leader Mathias Middelberg on Tuesday at a press conference in Berlin called at short notice. It’s about the enforcement of federal law.

Union wants to set up a committee of inquiry without support

Hamburg member of the Bundestag Franziska Hoppermann explained that a federal investigative committee has a different “broadness and depth of investigation” than a state committee. The Hamburg Parliament is also not a full-time parliament. “We owe it to the citizens to take a close look,” she said in Berlin. The chairman of the finance committee, Matthias Hauer, stated that the Union would “make extensive use” of the rights. You will use the committee without consulting other opposition parties.

In view of the quorum of a quarter of the votes in the Bundestag, the Union is in a position to “submit this application on its own”. Middelberg emphasized that he wanted to clarify the matter. When asked whether he expected new findings, he said: “We can count on them.” In the end, it is up to the citizens to evaluate the results.

The new Hamburg CDU state and parliamentary group leader Dennis Thering welcomed the actions of his party in the federal government. “The findings of the investigative committee in Hamburg show that more far-reaching clarification is also necessary at federal level,” he said. “By then Scholz will no longer be able to refer to his questionable memory gaps and then the role of the former finance senator and current mayor Tschentscher will have to be questioned again.”

The CDU and CSU want to use the committee of inquiry directly in the first week of meetings after Easter. They focus on the following aspects, as Merz and Dobrindt wrote to the parliamentary group:

• The Union wants to clarify why the Hamburg administration in 2016 allowed the reclaim of tax refunds from cum-ex transactions wrongly received from the Warburg Bank to become statute-barred. It also addresses the question of why the Federal Ministry of Finance had to instruct Hamburg to reclaim taxes in 2017 and who in the city is responsible for decisions in this context.
• In 2016, the Hamburg tax authorities initially advocated reclaiming the tax refunds wrongly received from Warburg Bank. Within a few weeks, she changed her mind. Exactly during this change of opinion, there were at least two meetings between Scholz and the then chairman of the supervisory board and co-owner of Warburg Bank, Olearius, as well as at least one telephone call initiated by Scholz with Olearius. In addition, Olearius met with various Hamburg SPD politicians. For the Union, the question arises of a possible political influence on the decision-making in the Hamburg authorities in the tax affair.
• Scholz had stated in July 2020 that he could remember meeting Olearius in November 2017. Shortly after the statement, two other meetings and a phone call initiated by Scholz with Olearius became known. In subsequent surveys in September 2020 in the Finance Committee of the German Bundestag and in April 2021 in the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry of the Hamburg Parliament on the “Cum-Ex tax money affair”, Scholz then stated that he had no concrete memories of any meetings in this regard. Here, too, the CDU and CSU see a large number of questions that need to be clarified.

More: The cum-ex scandal – is the Cologne public prosecutor delaying the investigation?