Extensive investigations by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office into Cum-Ex

The Hamburg public prosecutor's office only said that "extensive investigations are still pending in the proceedings, which will take a considerable amount of time to carry out." The file includes 14 moving boxes and 600 million files. The viewing and evaluation of the material is ongoing.

What Cum-Ex is about

In the tax fraud, financial actors moved shares with ("cum") and without ("ex") dividend entitlement back and forth in a nested system in order to get refunds for taxes that had not been paid. The peak phase of this system was between 2006 and 2011. According to estimates, the tax authorities and thus the general public lost a double-digit billion euro amount.

Initially, those involved argued that they had only taken advantage of a loophole in the law - that the legislature was, in a sense, to blame for having written a law with gaps. In retrospect, this argument is wrong, there was never a loophole in the law: in 2021, the Federal Court of Justice decided that it was not just a morally questionable rip-off in a legal gray area, but a criminal offense.

Location: Hamburg

The Cologne public prosecutor's office in particular excelled in investigating cum-ex cases. The Federal Central Tax Office in neighboring Bonn, which is affected by cum-ex transactions, is responsible for this, which is also why many cases end up with the Cologne public prosecutor's office.

However, the Hamburg public prosecutor's office could have taken action years ago - the fact that they didn't did so angered some critics. Hamburg is a scene for this type of criminal activity; institutions such as the Warburg Bank were involved.

The allegations have been known for a long time

It has been known since 2014 at the latest that HSH Nordbank also had a hand in it: At that time, the bank initiated tax refunds of around 126 million euros to compensate for tax damage caused by cum-ex transactions. The Cologne public prosecutor's office later took action, and in 2021 the authority from North Rhine-Westphalia had the rooms of the former HSH Nordbank in Hamburg searched.

In the meantime, the investigation into the largest tax fraud in the Federal Republic is not only about cum-ex, but also related cum-cum transactions. According to the information, the investigation now taken over by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office also involves “cum/cum designs”.