The investigation began more than five years ago, when Scholz was still mayor of the city of Hamburg. It is linked to the broader Cum Ex investigation, in which bank fraudsters defrauded the German state out of more than 30 billion euros. Some banks, companies or individuals demanded a refund of taxes from the authorities for alleged expenses that were never made.
The scandal had already hung over the Social Democrat politician’s 2021 campaign, but in the end it had little effect as Scholz’s possible involvement in the fraud case remained unclear. Now the situation is heating up again after the emergence of new details that call into question his previous protection, the publication reports, citing people familiar with it.
After Easter on April 9, the Hamburg regional parliament plans to summon Scholz for the third time to the investigative committee investigating the scandal. And the center-right CDU/CSU bloc, for its part, wants to conduct a nationwide inquiry in the Bundestag. A government spokesman said Berlin “as a matter of principle” does not comment on decisions announced by members of the Bundestag “out of respect for the constitutional body,” German media reported.
The CDU/CSU group has enough votes in parliament to set up a special investigative committee. The Left Party also said it would support such a request. Parliamentary investigative committees can hear witnesses and experts and request access to documents. While the results are summarized in a non-binding report, as was the case with Trump before the US congressional select committee, the political implications, for example in terms of demoting Scholz and Germany’s ruling party in the upcoming elections, could be significant. .
Scholz came under scrutiny for his connections to a Hamburg bank involved in a tax evasion scheme: during his time as mayor, he met alone three times with one of the bank’s owners, MM Warburg & Co. who at that time At the time he was already being investigated by the Hamburg tax office. The officials planned to return 47 million euros which, in his opinion, was obtained dishonestly in connection with the fraud.
In the end, however, the financial authority allowed the statute of limitations on the payment claim to expire, and a few years later, after the details of Scholz’s meetings with the bank owner became known, critics began to doubt that the main democratic social actors could have interfered in the affairs of the financial institution, favoring it.
Although the foreign minister constantly denied his interference, he did not respond to what was discussed in private meetings either. Instead, Scholz said several times over the past two and a half years that he could not recall the content of his conversations with the bank executive.
This version is now being called into question as details have emerged from a previous and long-standing confidential hearing of the Bundestag committee involving Scholz in July 2020, in which, sources said, he readily recalled details of his meetings with The banker. Critics of him argue that Scholz only began to claim that he did not remember the nature of the meetings when the political and possibly criminal dimension of it became apparent.
“This large gap in the chancellor’s memory after the initial recollection of a particular meeting… raises many questions that require clarification,” the CDU/CSU letter reads.
