The key figure in the cum-ex scandal, Hanno Berger, is due to appear before the Wiesbaden district court on April 12.

In the proceedings on suspicion of tax evasion against the 71-year-old, further hearings are scheduled until the end of July, as the authority announced on Monday in Wiesbaden.

(AZ: 6 KLs - 1111 Js 18753/21).

The tax lawyer Berger was extradited from Switzerland to Germany at the end of February.

Berger should have appeared in an ongoing cum-ex trial at the Wiesbaden district court last spring, but stayed away.

Therefore, the proceedings against him were initially separated.

Berger, a former tax official, is believed to be one of the architects of the model in which banks and investors never refunded taxes they paid.

He last lived in Switzerland, where he had gone years ago, and rejected the allegations.

He and his lawyer argue, among other things, that the offenses he was accused of were not punishable in Switzerland.

In cum-ex deals, banks and other financial players moved stocks with ("cum") and non-dividend ("ex") dividend rights back and forth around the dividend record date.

The aim was to refund taxes that had not been paid.

According to estimates, the German state lost an amount in the double-digit billions as a result.

The Federal Court of Justice had decided that cum-ex transactions should be considered tax evasion and are therefore punishable.

According to the public prosecutor, Berger is accused in the Wiesbaden proceedings of obtaining false certificates for 113.3 million euros in unpaid capital gains tax including the solidarity contribution in 61 transactions between 2006 and 2008.

The transactions had a volume of 15.8 billion euros.