The savings banks and the public-law state banks belonging to the federal states, such as the former West LB and HSH Nordbank, were among the largest players in the opaque circular transactions with shares around the dividend date, which cost the German tax authorities more than 10 billion euros in lost tax revenue .
Hanno Mussler
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Marcus Young
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It is also known that Dekabank, the savings bank fund company, is involved in the cum-ex swamp.
However, the investigations reached a new dimension this week.
As a spokesman for Deka confirmed on Wednesday morning when asked, the bank's headquarters in downtown Frankfurt and other offices have been searched since Tuesday.
Accordingly, the investigations are directed against two to three dozen current and former employees of the bank.
Current board members are also said to be affected by the investigations – if only because they signed the tax returns.
Apparently, the investigators did not search the private rooms of current board members.
Elisabeth Roegele, who has meanwhile switched to Bafin as Vice President and responsible for securities trading and who stumbled across the Wirecard scandal, is apparently not accused by the investigators in Deka.
The Deka spokesman did not want to comment on this.
However, he confirmed that Deka has been cooperating with the authorities for years.
Investigations against 1400 suspects
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, both of whom had learned their trade at HSH Nordbank in Hamburg/Kiel, pursued 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 record date, several participants pushed shares with ("cum") and without ("ex") dividend rights back and forth.
In the end, tax offices reimbursed capital gains taxes that had not been paid at all.
The state suffered an estimated double-digit billion in damage.
In 2012, the tax loophole was closed.
In the summer of 2021, the Federal Court of Justice determined that cum-ex transactions are to be classified 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.