It is not a normal criminal process that begins on Monday in the large jury court room 165 at the Frankfurt Regional Court.

In the three rows of the dock, below the light wood paneling, there are usually those who are accused of particularly serious crimes such as murder or manslaughter by the public prosecutor.

Around nine o'clock, five former bankers from the now insolvent Maple Bank take their place with their defense lawyers in front of the 24th Large Commercial Criminal Chamber - the oldest defendant is former Germany boss Wolfgang Schuck at 68.

Marcus Jung

Editor in business.

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    This is followed by two former members of the management, both responsible for the bank's securities and trading business, as well as the then head of the trading department.

    As the youngest, a 49-year-old securities and derivatives trader completes the quintet of defendants, who were once clearly below Schuck in the hierarchy of the Maple Bank.

    The public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt accuses them of having jointly built up trading structures between 2006 and 2010 in order to carry out stock group transactions around the dividend date ("cum-ex transactions").

    This resulted in incorrect information to the tax authorities, the deceived Frankfurt-Höchst tax office reimbursed a capital gains tax of 388 million euros that had not actually been paid over the years.

    If there is a conviction for particularly serious tax evasion, Schuck, who has been in custody for four months in the meantime, and the other defendants face up to ten years in prison.

    Exceptionally high damage

    Schuck has rejected the allegations in the past. In any case, the controversial share deals seem to have paid off financially for the former Germany boss. According to the indictment, Schuck is said to have received at least 8.4 million euros in bonus payments between 2006 and 2010. Based on its last balance sheet total of 3.7 billion euros, the Maple Bank caused relatively high economic damage. That is precisely why the "Maple Bank" case is considered exceptional even within the prosecution. The Frankfurt prosecutors have been investigating a large number of accused in almost a dozen other cum-ex proceedings for almost a decade.

    After the corona-related criminal process at the Wiesbaden district court, from which the alleged main defendant Hanno Berger stayed away due to illness, it is the second cum-ex indictment by the public prosecutor's office. Their representatives, Christopher Wenzl and Hun Chai, read out parts of the allegations from their original 416-page indictment against Schuck and his co-defendants at the start of the trial on Monday. Because: Because of the rapidly increasing number of corona infections, the economic criminal chamber under the presiding judge Werner Gröschel was forced in spring 2021 to separate a larger part of the proceedings relating to the reports of the tax attorneys who were also accused and thus to reduce the number of originally accused.For health reasons, the Maple Bank board of all people stayed away from the process that signed the tax return.

    Lawyer with a courtesy report

    This also applies to Ulf Johannemann, the former tax partner at the business law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, whose name can be found dozen of times in the indictment that the FAZ has before us.

    The once renowned tax attorney is said to have been privy to the trading strategy known internally as "German Pair" from 2006 onwards.

    Johannemann is said to have dispelled “any discomfort” due to fraudulent tax reclaims within the bank's management team at an early stage.

    When the legislature and letters from the Federal Ministry of Finance restrict cum-ex trading, Johannemann further attested that it was tax-free - the prosecutors accused him of “courtesy reports”.

    In a subsequent process, Johannemann and his former employee are supposed to answer for aiding and abetting tax evasion. The tax attorneys could therefore refuse to testify if they are heard as witnesses in the current proceedings. With this decision, according to the ranks of those involved in the process, the Economic Criminal Chamber has already withdrawn some of the tax expertise from the criminal proceedings. However, the first cum-ex criminal trials at the Bonn Regional Court have shown that this is urgently needed. The proceedings in Frankfurt will continue at the end of May.