Cologne The largest investigative authority in North Rhine-Westphalia, with around 600 employees, needs a new boss: the previous head of the authority, Joachim Roth, surprisingly announced his premature departure this Tuesday. He has decided to take early retirement on July 31, 2023. He announced this by email at 2:30 p.m., as several sources confirmed to the Handelsblatt.
Roth is 63 years old. Neither the public prosecutor’s office nor the Ministry of Justice wanted to comment on the personnel.
The Cologne public prosecutor’s office is the central authority for the Cum-Ex investigations. Cum-Ex refers to share group transactions around the dividend record date for the purpose of double reimbursement of capital gains tax that has only been paid once. Around 30 public prosecutors are investigating more than 1,600 suspects in around 120 investigation complexes in a specially set up main department. The Cologne public prosecutor has submitted eight charges. To date, five criminal cases have resulted in convictions, one of which hit tax attorney Hanno Berger.
Authorities chief Roth had also come under pressure because of the Cum-Ex investigations. As a result, he was unable to fill positions that had already been approved for the main department. The investigation is also progressing more slowly than planned.
As late as 2019, Roth explained at a press conference that it would be better to investigate the tax scandal with a minimal number of staff. “It came down to untangling a thread and then rearranging the skein. It’s no use if 100 people pull the string or if one person does it and 99 are watching.”
It has long been clear that the complex and often international investigations can only be managed with a very large number of public prosecutors. Nevertheless, Roth is said to have repeatedly entrusted investigators from the Cum-Ex department with other tasks.
Hamburg parliamentarians attack NRW judiciary
There is currently also a dispute between the NRW judiciary and the Cum-Ex investigative committee of the Hamburg Parliament. The Hamburgers want to clarify “why the Hamburg Senate and the Hamburg tax administration were prepared to let taxes in the millions statute of limitations with a view to cum-ex transactions and to what extent there was influence in favor of the taxable bank and to the detriment of the people of Hamburg”. .
It is about the MM Warburg Bank, the behavior of the Hamburg financial administration and now also about the former Landesbank HSH Nordbank. The Cologne public prosecutor’s office keeps investigation files on these complexes. The Ministry of Justice in North Rhine-Westphalia has been refusing to send important documents on the Cum-Ex tax scandal to Hamburg for a year. The head of the Cologne authorities Roth, who has a say in the release of the files, is also in demand.
The investigative committee will not be put off any longer. He announced that he would request the files through the courts.
When asked about his motivation for the job, Roth once said in an interview that you simply have to enjoy your job. “The feeling of being in the right place every day gives me strength.” Roth has apparently lost this feeling now.
More: An investigator accuses: From her point of view, the state does not fight tax evasion consistently enough