Offices of the savings bank fund company Dekabank have been searched as part of Cum-Ex investigations.
The Deka spokesman confirmed on Tuesday morning to the FAZ that investigators had visited the bank on Tuesday and that the searches would continue on Wednesday.
Deka has been cooperating with the authorities for several years.
The public prosecutor's office in Cologne, which is leading the nationwide investigation of the largest tax robbery in history, known as the cum-ex scandal, and is investigating a large number of banks and around 1,300 people, explained in a recent e-mail that they were carrying out a cum- Ex-Proceedings Search warrants against a bank in Frankfurt and against an auditing company.
She didn't name names.
In addition, the private homes of eight suspects would also be searched, and around 110 officers were on duty.
Deka, which belongs to the public savings banks, was one of the first banks ever to be known about its involvement in the cum-ex swamp.
A huge deal from 2010 hit the headlines, in which Deka is said to have held shares around the dividend date for a foreign customer who was subject to higher tax in Germany in order to save taxes.
At that time, the savings bank fund company, led by investment banker Franz Waas and capital market board member Walter Groll, was pursuing the strategic goal of becoming the most important derivatives bank behind Deutsche Bank.
Many banks mired in scandal
Many banks are involved in the Cum-Ex scandal.
Investors used a loophole in the law to cheat the Treasury out of taxes for years.
Around the dividend date, several participants pushed shares with ("cum") and without ("ex") dividend rights back and forth. In the end, the tax authorities reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid at all. The state suffered an estimated double-digit billion loss. In 2012 the tax loophole was closed.In the summer of 2021, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that cum-ex transactions are to be assessed as tax evasion.
Several public prosecutors and courts are working on the cum-ex scandal, there are always raids.
The Cologne public prosecutor recently searched the offices of the US investment bank Merrill Lynch and the British Barclays Bank in Frankfurt.
A driving force behind the cum-ex deals in this country, the tax attorney Hanno Berger, has to answer on suspicion of tax evasion before the regional court in Bonn and the regional court in Wiesbaden.