The 72-year-old has had a deep fall. He was once one of the most renowned tax lawyers. Now he has been sentenced to the highest prison sentence to date in the Cum-Ex tax scandal.
(Photo: dpa)
Bonn Hanno Berger puts his hands on top of each other and looks down when the verdict is passed. It is 2.03 p.m., Berger is standing in front of the dock in the district court of Bonn. There was no emotion on his face when the presiding judge, Roland Zickler, announced the sentence: eight years in prison.
“Almost all the allegations that we have considered here have been confirmed,” says Zickler. A lecture follows about the business dealings for which Berger was convicted. “Cum-ex deals aren’t good, and they’re not bad,” Zickler says. “They just exist. They are probably still being carried out thousands of times a day.” However, the way Berger carried them out was illegal.
Berger shakes his head. He takes notes, slips a piece of paper to his lawyer, takes it back and continues writing. Judge Zickler is now explaining to him why exactly the transactions for the Hamburg bank MM Warburg, on which Berger advised, were illegal.
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