Dusseldorf It’s going to be a showdown. Hanno Berger and Benjamin Frey were once close partners. Today Berger calls his former foster son a traitor. Frey speaks of Berger as the head of a gang who enriched themselves with the community. When the two meet in the Bonn district court for the first time in years, the air burns.
In the Handelsblatt Crime podcast, the investigative team traces the path of these two extraordinary lawyers. Hanno Berger, born as a pastor’s son, went into financial administration in Hesse in 1981 and within a surprisingly short time became the top bank auditor in Germany’s financial metropolis. Then he switched sides, advising large corporations and the super-rich on how to cut taxes.
Soon that wasn’t enough. Berger mastered a method of reclaiming more taxes than you paid. He became Mister Cum Ex.
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Benjamin Frey was once his student. Having grown up in a working-class household in the provinces of Friesland, Frey surprised his family with an excellent degree in law and, after completing his dissertation in 2001, ended up in the American law firm of all places, where Berger meanwhile headed the tax department. Frey did everything to attract attention. Berger took him under his wing.
The two became inseparable. They switched to another law firm and founded their own in 2010. Together they made millions from cum-ex deals. Tax transactions at the expense of the general public made them very rich. Then her success broke up, then her partnership. Today they are bitter enemies.
Handelsblatt Crime appears every 14 days and can be heard wherever there are podcasts.
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More: You can hear the last episode of Handelsblatt Crime here