“I did not exercise any influence in the tax proceedings relating to the warburg bank“Declared the Social Democratic leader regarding this fraud revealed in 2017 and which affected a dozen countries.
The mount was a device of tax optimization created by several banks, which allowed foreign investors relieve your taxes on dividends. Dozens of people were charged in this case in Germany, including bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers and financial advisers.
Among the banks incriminated was the Warburg bank of hamburg, which should have paid 47 million euros to that German port city. The mayor’s office resigned in 2016 to claim that sum, but in the end the bank had to pay tens of millions of euros due to the pressure exerted by the government of Angela Merkel.
Evidence against Olaf Scholz
The researchers are trying to find out if some political leaders, including Olaf Scholz, then mayor of Hamburg (2011-2018), pressured the municipal treasury to give up collecting those taxes.
“There was no political influence in the fiscal procedure,” insisted the now head of the German government, who swept away the “assumptions and insinuations” repeated according to him in the press.
Apparently, the decision to waive the reimbursement owed by the Warburg bank was made shortly after a conversation between Olaf Scholz and Christian Oleariusthen director of the bank.
Various information revealed in recent days has called into question the claims of whoever succeeded Merkel in the German chancellery at the end of 2021. The investigators used several emails from someone close to Scholz, which would contribute “potentially probative” elements of “reflections on data deletion”.
In addition, the police found more than 200,000 euros in cash in the home of another politician from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), that may have played a role in the bank’s reimbursement, fueling suspicions of a possible bribery.
Other seized documents would suggest that Olaf Scholz, contrary to what he has claimed so far, would have raised the issue of reimbursement directly with Christian Olearius.
The meetings were
This Friday, Olaf Scholz explained that he met with Olearius several times, but without keeping “a concrete memory” of those meetings. “There was no favored treatment with Olearius,” the foreign minister said.
The newspaper bild published excerpts from Olearius’ agenda on Friday, which mention a meeting with the German chancellor on October 26, 2016. “He asks questions, listens without expressing the slightest opinion and without indicating whether he will act or not“, the banker would have written after that meeting.
The opposition has harshly criticized the leader of Europe’s leading economic power.
“The latest revelations lead to the assumption that Olaf Scholz and his direct entourage made an effort to give only limited information about some meetings or telephone conversations or to voluntarily hide them to protect the current chancellor,” he denounced. Matthias HauerConservative member of the Finance Committee of the Bundestag (lower house of the German Parliament).
The case has not gone down well with Olaf Scholz, who is now less popular than some of his ministers, less than a year after coming to power in Germany.
Source: Ambito
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