Verdict in the Cum-Ex scandal
BGH: Maple bankers have to pay back 20 million euros
According to a BGH decision, a group of convicted Maple bankers must pay back almost twice as much proceeds from cum-ex deals as previously ordered. The verdict has consequences for further proceedings.
In the Cum-Ex tax scandal, four former Maple Bank managers must repay a total of around 20 million euros from the proceeds of the crime following a ruling by the Federal Court of Justice. Germany’s highest criminal court ordered payments that were almost twice as high as in an earlier ruling by the Frankfurt regional court.
In November 2022, the regional court imposed long prison sentences on three former Maple bankers as well as a suspended sentence, including on the former German head of the now insolvent institute. In total, the confiscation of the proceeds of the crime amounting to more than 10 million euros from the bankers’ assets was also ordered.
The public prosecutor’s office demanded a different calculation of the proceeds of the crime and appealed to the Federal Court of Justice – and was now right. A BGH spokeswoman confirmed the verdict; several media outlets had previously reported. The BGH decided that all proceeds of the crime must be collected gross, meaning that income taxes that have already been paid cannot be deducted. With a top tax rate of 45 percent, the proceeds of crime to be confiscated almost double, as the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office explained.
Far-reaching consequences – more than 1,700 cum-ex suspects
The BGH judges’ decision not only has consequences for the case of Maple Bank, which, according to the prosecution, caused tax damage of a good 388 million euros with illegal cum-ex share deals. The verdict from Karlsruhe also has great significance for further cum-ex proceedings, as higher confiscation of the proceeds of crime is now possible, according to the public prosecutor’s office.
The Frankfurt prosecution alone is currently investigating 13 cases involving 60 defendants. So far, ten defendants have been convicted at the Frankfurt and Wiesbaden regional courts, including the tax lawyer Hanno Berger and a former top lawyer from the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. The Cologne public prosecutor’s office is considered a leader in cum-ex proceedings. According to the Citizens’ Movement Financial Transition Association, more than 1,700 suspects are being investigated in the Cum-Ex scandal.
With cum-ex share deals around the dividend deadline, banks and investors are estimated to have cheated the German state of at least ten billion euros. They created a mess with the businesses, and in the end the tax offices refunded unpaid taxes. The legal loophole was closed in 2012. In 2021, the BGH decided that cum-ex transactions should be viewed as tax evasion.
dpa
Source: Stern
