Dusseldorf Hanno Berger is back. According to information from the Handelsblatt, the 71-year-old tax attorney crossed the border between Germany and Switzerland on Thursday morning. The Swiss police handed Berger over to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) at the Kreuzlingen-Konstanz border point. The Handelsblatt learned this from various people familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that the extradition had been carried out. “The accused was handed over to BKA officials today, accompanied by a senior public prosecutor from the general public prosecutor’s office,” said the spokesman. He will now be brought before the Economic Crimes Chamber of the Wiesbaden District Court for the promulgation of the arrest warrant.
In Germany, the lawyer is expected to be taken into custody because of the risk of absconding. The first main hearing against him is likely to begin in just a few weeks. Berger has been charged in Wiesbaden and Bonn. In Bonn, too, he is to be brought before the magistrate shortly. The allegations are serious tax evasion and fraud.
A look back: Berger fled in November 2012 when investigators from the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office searched his offices on the 32nd floor of the Skyper high-rise in Frankfurt. The German constitutional state accused Berger of involvement in tax evasion in the hundreds of millions. From his exile in the Swiss mountain village of Zuoz, Berger always rejected the allegations and spoke of a judicial scandal.
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Now he can no longer hide. Berger is the most prominent figure in the cum-ex deal tax scandal. The participants traded shares in a circle in order to swindle tax refunds. Tax lawyers like Berger rely on the so-called structures.
Billionaires like the late Rafael Roth invested millions, banks like Hypo-Vereinsbank borrowed many times more to maximize trading volume – and profits. In the end, everyone involved used the tax fund. The damage to the general public is estimated at a total of twelve billion euros.
In its indictment, the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office describes Hanno Berger as the spiritus rector of the cum-ex business. Like no other, he attracted investors and refined the system of tax evasion more and more. Berger defended the grip on the tax fund to the last as legitimate exploitation of a legal loophole; Of course, it has now been decided in the last instance: Cum-Ex deals have always been criminal.
Berger never accepted this. His confidence in his own superiority was too great, for too long his word was considered law in the industry.
For a long time, Berger was considered a star lawyer
Berger wore many nicknames in his career. It was called “Bankenschreck” when Berger was still a member of the Hessian financial administration and was responsible for the tax audit of Germany’s largest financial institutions. He was called “rainmaker” in the law firms where Berger acquired one customer after the other after he switched sides to the private sector. When Berger then became self-employed and generated fabulous profits with cum-ex deals, the scene paid homage to him as “the master”.
Master Berger wanted to prevent his return to Germany by all means. His announcement in October 2017 that he would “of course” face a trial in Germany faded when the trial became concrete. Berger called the proceedings against him “unnecessary” in May 2018. When the Wiesbaden district court nevertheless admitted the charges against Berger in December 2019, he presented a certificate. His lawyers said he was unable to stand trial. They refused to be examined by a medical officer.
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From mid-2021 Berger was in extradition custody. That didn’t make him any more insightful. Berger called the efforts of the German constitutional state to put him on trial for his tax offenses as “politically motivated”. In a letter of complaint to the Swiss Federal Criminal Court, Berger wrote that high-ranking members of the executive branch “shouldered with the media”. There will be a hunt against him.
Experts suspect that Berger will first have to answer in Bonn.
(Photo: Reuters)
The Swiss judiciary did not want to follow his assessment. Cum-ex deals were used by those involved to have taxes refunded that they had not paid at all. “It’s about the purely tortious exploitation of the system of reimbursement and the intentional damage to the community,” wrote the judges of the Swiss Federal Criminal Court on the question of whether Berger should be extradited.
“Obviously it cannot be right that a withheld tax is paid twice. Likewise, it obviously cannot be right that a tax that has not been paid at all is paid out.”
Two courts await the accused
Berger therefore belongs where the general public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt and the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne wanted him to be: before German criminal courts. “In view of the particular severity of the allegations of fraud and the qualifying circumstances, no objective reason can be seen in a prima facie assessment why the fraudulent acts to the detriment of the community should be exempted from the significantly stricter punishment of commercial fraud,” the decision said. It is therefore a “extraditable criminal act” before.
On February 16, the Swiss Federal Office of Justice approved Berger’s request for extradition after it had ultimately failed in the Swiss Federal Court. It is not yet clear whether he will have to go to the dock in Hesse or North Rhine-Westphalia. Another cum-ex process is currently running in front of the Wiesbaden district court, so Berger would have to wait in line.
Experts therefore suspect that he will first have to answer in Bonn. In the criminal proceedings in North Rhine-Westphalia, Berger is suspected of having obtained unlawful tax repayments of 278.5 million euros from 2007 to 2013, together with other defendants associated with the Hamburg MM-Warburg-Bank, and of having put 27.3 million euros in his own pocket .
The court has already admitted the charge of the Cologne public prosecutor’s office and opened the main hearing. The 12th Major Trial Chamber, chaired by Roland Zickler, has just completed another cum-ex trial. It was the third Cum-Ex procedure. The district court of Bonn would be ready for Hanno Berger.
More: The Next Wave of Law Enforcement: Masses of Cum-Ex Money Laundering Reports