Although the 3-1/2-hour hearing produced no new information on the “cum-ex” scandal, the fact that the case is dragging on threatens to undermine the chancellor, who is struggling to hold his fractured coalition together in public. dissatisfaction with rising energy costs; In the “cum-ex” or dividend stripping system, banks and investors will quickly exchange shares in companies around their dividend payout date, obfuscating share ownership and allowing many parties to falsely claim tax deductions on the dividends. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register The loophole, now closed, took on a political dimension in the northern port of Hamburg because of the slowness of the authorities in 2016, when Scholz was mayor to demand repayment of millions of euros won under the scheme by local bank Warburg. Warburg, which plays a major role in Germany’s second-largest city, eventually settled its tax bill of around 50 million euros ($50.3 million) after the federal finance ministry intervened. “I had no influence on the Warburg tax case,” Scholz said on Friday during his second appearance before the Hamburg parliamentary commission of inquiry into the cum-ex case, one of Germany’s biggest post-war corporate scandals. “There is not even the slightest suggestion anywhere that I agreed to anything,” he said, referring to dozens of other testimony before the committee during a 2-1/2-year investigation. Scholz again insisted he could not recall the content of the three meetings he had with the Warburg chairman at the time, adding that he also met with representatives of other banks as mayor. “The chancellor, in effect, today refused to take part in the inquiry,” said Richard Schilmaeker, the opposition Conservative spokesman on the committee, laughing that Scholz would have to be hypnotized to recover his lost memories. Seelmaecker said Scholz could be called to testify before lawmakers a third time as new findings from the investigation have just emerged. The chancellor’s popularity lags behind the economy and foreign ministers, with just 58% of Germans believing he is doing a good job compared to an average of around 70% for his predecessor, Angela Merkel, during her 16 years in office . His Social Democratic Party (SPD) has slipped to third place in the polls behind the opposition conservatives and junior coalition partners the Greens.
200,000 EUROS IN SECURITY
Finance Minister Christian Lindner, from the junior coalition party the pro-business Free Democrats, which is also trailing in the polls, threw his support behind the chancellor on Friday. “I always understood Olaf Scholz as a person of integrity, whether I was in the opposition or as now in the government – and I have no reason to doubt that now,” Lindner told the Rheinische Post newspaper. Prominent Greens have remained silent on the case after criticizing Scholz for it while in opposition. Recent headlines that prosecutors investigating the scheme in Hamburg discovered €200,000 in the safe of a local politician from Scholz’s ruling Social Democrats have reignited suspicions of political interference on behalf of the bank. Scholz denied knowledge of the cash or its origin and said he no longer has contact with the lawmaker involved. The lawmaker did not respond to a request for comment. “I’m hopeful that the speculation and innuendo can stop,” Scholz said. “They lack any foundation.” The chancellor had faced Hamburg MPs last year. Gerhard Schick, director of Finance Watch Germany and a former Greens member of the Bundestag, said he did not believe in Scholz’s oblivion. “I think this is pretense and damages his credibility,” he said. One of the prosecutors’ recent findings is a discrepancy between the several entries in the Hamburg authorities’ diary mentioning the Warburg bank and the “cum-ex” and the few emails on the subject, Der Spiegel magazine wrote, citing the report of the prosecutors. “This suggests a targeted deletion (of the emails),” Spiegel said, citing the report. ($1 = 0.9939 euros) Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke. Additional reports by Hans Seidenstuecker and Jan Schwartz. edited by Andrew Cawthorne, Toby Chopra and Leslie Adler Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
