Tax attorney Hanno Berger is fighting against extradition to Germany

Cologne Hanno Berger doesn’t give up. It was not until December 20 that the tax attorney suffered a severe defeat by the Swiss judiciary: the Federal Criminal Court rejected his complaint against the decision to extradite him to Germany. Now Berger is going to the federal court. The Handelsblatt learned this from judicial circles.

For about half a year, the German has been in extradition custody in Switzerland’s most modern prison, the Cazis Tignez correctional facility in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. The 71-year-old is accused of various offenses in the Cum-Ex tax affair. The term describes a complex way of trading stocks. The parties involved thus obtained double tax refunds.

When German investigators searched his office in Frankfurt at the end of 2012, Berger withdrew to Switzerland. He was actually supposed to appear in court in Wiesbaden as early as 2020, but Berger lodged various appeals. Nevertheless: the bottom line was that all of his efforts to prevent arrest and the threat of extradition were unsuccessful.

Both the Hessian and the North Rhine-Westphalian judiciary made extradition requests to Switzerland. There are indictments against Berger in both federal states. The Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office is dealing with the case of Berger client Rafael Roth. With the help of Hypo-Vereinsbank, his company traded shares with a volume of 15.8 billion euros between 2006 and 2008. The tax loss amounted to 113 million euros. The main hearing has now started without the main suspects.

The Cologne public prosecutor’s office is investigating Berger because of transactions by MM Warburg Bank in which the tax attorney is said to have been involved. In this case, the amount of the unlawful tax refunds should amount to a total of almost 279 million euros. The investigators also accuse Berger of having defrauded investors. The Bonn Regional Court has admitted the indictment.

“Malicious machinations”

In its 51-page decision, the Swiss Federal Criminal Court left no doubt that the Federal Office of Justice was right to grant the extradition request. “It is about the purely criminal exploitation of the system of restitution and the deliberate damage to the community,” wrote the judges. “Obviously, it cannot be right for a withheld tax to be paid twice. Likewise, it can obviously not be correct that a tax that has not been delivered is paid out. ”The particular machinations described in the extradition request could not be described otherwise than fraudulent.

According to the judges, qualified fraud to the detriment of the community can be assumed, with the tax refund system being used as an “instrument” of fraud. “In view of the particular gravity of the allegations of fraud and the qualifying circumstances, a prima facie assessment does not reveal any objective reason why the fraudulent acts to the detriment of the community should be excluded from the significantly stricter punishment of commercial fraud,” says the decision. It is therefore an “extraditable criminal act” according to common criminal law.

The Federal Criminal Court denied Berger’s argument that his persecution was politically motivated. In his complaint, Berger had spoken of a “solidarity” between high-ranking members of the executive branch and the media in order to hunt down the alleged “tax robbers” and him in particular.

The answer of the court: “The interest of the German public obviously lies in the spectacular extent of the allegations against him (Berger) and the other defendants against the German state. In this situation there are no reasons to assume that the criminal proceedings against him would have been initiated for political reasons. “

More: Handelsblatt Crime podcast: Hanno Berger, cum-ex-string puller and public enemy number one.