Bonn At 10 a.m. sharp, Christian Olearius enters meeting room S 0.11 in the Bonn Regional Court. Surrounded by four defense lawyers, the banker accused of tax evasion stands in front of the dock, leaning loosely on the back of the chair in which he will sit down a few minutes later. Olearius, snow-white hair, dressed in a blue suit with a white shirt and blue tie, looks several times in the direction of the waiting journalists, the cameras click.
For decades he determined the fortunes of one of the most traditional German financial houses, the Hamburg private bank MM Warburg. Olearius was chairman of the board and later chairman of the supervisory board as well as a shareholder. He is now accused of tax evasion through cum-ex transactions.
The largest hall of the Bonn Regional Court is almost full with around 100 spectators. The public’s great interest in the trial is a benefit, says presiding judge Marion Slota-Haaf, but during the trial the role of the spectators is a silent one.
Then prosecutor Stephanie Kerkering reads out the indictment. Olearius is said to have been guilty of particularly serious tax evasion in 14 cases. Cum-Ex is the name of the method he chose for this. The Latin term refers to single-circuit stock transactions with (cum) and without (ex) dividends, in which those involved received a double refund of capital gains tax paid only once.
Olearius denies his guilt. His lawyers want to plead for acquittal. That seems almost impossible.
The prosecutors put the total damage that Olearius is said to have caused at 444.2 million euros. Of this, 276 million euros in taxes are said to have actually been evaded. The remaining 168 million euros remained an attempt because the tax office no longer granted the requested refunds. This point is therefore considered “attempted tax evasion”.
Steep climb, sudden fall
A large part of the transactions being negotiated took place at Warburg Bank itself. Between 2007 and 2011 it acted as a short seller in the market, i.e. it acquired securities that did not yet belong to the seller. This practice made it possible for the tax office to refund the capital gains tax twice.
The subsidiary Warburg Invest later developed the business further. In 2009 and 2010 she initiated funds with which wealthy private customers could participate in Cum-Ex. In addition, Olearius and Max Warburg themselves invested five million euros in 2008 through the Vigor company in a cum-ex fund called Seriva.
Hardly any banker in Germany has ever fallen further than Christian Olearius. The now 81-year-old shaped the traditional private bank MM Warburg for more than three decades. After Max Warburg brought him into the company in 1986, the business grew steadily. He led the bank as spokesman for the shareholders until mid-2014, after which he moved to the top of the supervisory board.
Things went downhill from January 20, 2016: On that day there was a raid on the Warburg headquarters on Ferdinandstrasse. Olearius’ office was also searched; the investigators already had initial suspicions against the banker.
At the time, the Hamburg tax office for large companies was considering whether it should reclaim 47 million euros in taxes for 2009 from the bank. The matter had to be decided in 2016 because it was threatened with a statute of limitations. Olearius now pulled out all the stops to avert this. He met the SPD politicians Johannes Kahrs and Alfons Pawelczyk several times so that they could lobby for his bank. Both are co-accused today.
Finally, the Warburg boss even managed to get into conversation with the then First Mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz. The two met twice in person and another conversation took place by telephone.
The current Federal Chancellor initially could not remember the meetings, then not the conversations with Olearius, who was already accused at the time. However, he stated that he was certain that he had not influenced the taxation process. The fact is that the tax office made a U-turn in November 2016 and waived the reclaim of 47 million euros. The tax officer P was in charge. She wrote to a colleague shortly after the decision that the “diabolical plan” had worked.
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“If Olearius says he is innocent because he knew nothing about the double refunds, that is simply unbelievable,” says Fabio De Masi, a financial expert and former Left Party member of the Bundestag, who is following the start of the trial against Olearius in Bonn. “According to her diary, the tax officer said that only politics could help. Only then did he ask Mr. Scholz. That shows: He knew that he would no longer be able to go any further legally to prevent the Cum-Ex loot from being collected.”
Scholz in trouble
In 2017 it was again discussed that MM Warburg would have to pay back money. This time it was about 43 million euros, and another meeting with Scholz is documented. This time, however, the Federal Ministry of Finance intervened: Berlin instructed the tax office to collect the money. The name of the current chancellor appears 27 times in the indictment.
For Olearius himself, the situation worsened in the following months. In March 2018, the Cologne investigators came to Hamburg for a second raid. The Bafin supervisory authority also put pressure on it. Ultimately, Olearius had to resign from his position as chairman of the bank’s supervisory board at the end of 2019.
On June 1, 2021, the Bonn Regional Court sentenced Christian S. to five and a half years in prison. He was the general representative of MM Warburg for a long time and was considered Olearius’ right-hand man. The accusations against him largely coincided with those against Olearius. The verdict is already final and S. has started his prison sentence.
A former managing director of Warburg Invest was also convicted and went to prison for three and a half years. Tax lawyer Hanno Berger, who met with Olearius several times and advised the bank on the cum-ex transactions, was hit even harder. Berger was sentenced to long prison terms in Bonn and Wiesbaden. The revisions are ongoing.
So the omens are bad for Olearius. He isn’t impressed by it. He has had the Munich lawyer Peter Gauweiler at his side for almost three years. His reputation has become legendary since he won almost a billion euros in damages from Deutsche Bank for the church heirs. In addition to Gauweiler, Olearius has hired three other high-profile lawyers: Klaus Landry, whom he has known for three decades, Rudolf Hübner from the US law firm Quinn Emanuel and criminal law professor Bernd Schünemann.
The trial against Olearius is initially scheduled for 28 days.
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