More than 200,000 euros in cash were found in a locker belonging to former SPD MP Kahrs. What does that have to do with the Cum-Ex affair in which Kahr’s companion, Chancellor Scholz, is involved? It is now clear that the investigators have no clue as to where the money came from.
The news caused a nationwide sensation. During the investigation into the affair of the largest tax fraud in German post-war history with the so-called cum-ex model, the Cologne public prosecutor’s office discovered a good 200,000 euros in cash in a bank safe deposit box in Hamburg with the accused former SPD leader Johannes Kahrs. Public assumptions circulated that the former confidant of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had held out his hands to encourage the gigantic tax fraud.
In essence, it is about the Warburg Bank in Hamburg. The private financial institution caught the eye of Cologne prosecutors in 2016 because the shareholders are said to have stolen hundreds of millions from the Treasury with the help of the Cum-Ex tax carousel. When the Hamburg tax authorities demanded the payments back, the bankers tried to activate politics. First and foremost the then Mayor Olaf Scholz and his cronies Johannes Kahrs. The latter was regarded in the party as an influential string puller who knew how to raise lavish donations for his home party district in Hamburg. Among other things, by the Warburg Bank shareholder, Christian Olearius, who has since been accused of the Cum-Ex affair.
In the eyes of a number of observers, it was fitting that the Cologne public prosecutor’s office found 200,000 euros in the safe deposit box of ex-Bundestag Kahrs during a raid shortly after the federal elections at the end of September 2021. Was it a bribe for intermediary services in the Cum-Ex affair to Olaf Scholz? An answer to the question seems a long way off.
Ulrich Bremer, spokesman for the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, responded to a FOCUS online request in writing with the fact that “during the search measures at the time, no cash contributions were found by the public prosecutor’s office”.
That means: The 200,000 euros from the former SPD politician were not confiscated. And then the senior public prosecutor added another meaningful sentence: “For legal reasons, measures to secure assets are only possible if there is a concrete suspicion that a person involved has obtained something from a criminal offense and there is a fear that it could be used to secure any later judicial proceedings Confiscation order also requires provisional asset safeguards.”
In plain language: Even almost a year after the raid, the Cologne investigators apparently do not know where the cash came from. Kahrs won’t tell them. As a suspect, he may remain silent. Proceedings for tax evasion are also out of the question. Because to this day, the public prosecutor’s office is unable to say when Kahrs put the money in his depot. Consequently, the former Scholz companion could declare the amount in his next tax return – and would be fine. In addition, the six-digit sum could come from completely different sources. It is not forbidden to store large amounts of cash in a safe deposit box.
With the Cum-Ex scam, the taxpayer was cheated out of around twelve billion euros. The model describes a stock trading circle with (cum) and without (ex) dividend entitlement, in which the tax authorities reimburse capital gains tax twice that was not previously paid. Service providers, consultants and banks were involved in the illegal transactions between 2007 and 2012 at various control points, which later shared the illegal profit from the dividend stripping among themselves.
